42 CIRCULAR CHURCHES. Part II. certainly a pleasing and elegant form of cluirch, though little adapted either for the accommodation of monies of the Mediaeval Church. either for the accommodation of a large congregation or to the cere- 494. Baptistery at Bonn. (From Boisseree's " Nieder Rhein.") There is another small edifice called a Ba|)tistery at Ratisbon, built in the last years of the 12th century, which shows this form
- passing rapidly away, and changing into the rectangular. It is in
reality a square with apses on three sides, and surmounted by an octagonal dome. As we have just seen, the same arrangement forms the principal as well as the most pleasing characteristic of the Cologne churches, where on a larger scale it shows capal)ilities which we cannot but regret were never carried to their legitimate termination. The present is a singularly pleasing specimen of the class, though very small, and wanting the nave, the addition of which gives such value to the triapsal form at Cologne, and shows how gracefully its lines inevitably group together. On the spot it is still called the Baptistery ; but the correct tradition, I believe, is that it was built for the tomb-house of the bishop to whom it owes its erection. One more specimen will serve to illustrate nearly all the known forms of this class. It is a little chapel at Cobern on the Moselle (Woodcut No. 495), hexagonal in plan, with an apse placed most unsymmetrically with reference to the entrance — so at least we should consider it; but the Germans seem always to have been of opinion that a side entrance was ]^referable to one opposite the prin- cipal point of interest. The details of this chapel are remarkably elegant, and its external form is a very favorable s])ecimen of the German style just before it was superseded in the beginning of the 13th century by the French pointed style.
