Spain, wealth unexampled and in the end fatal. Cathedrals and churches were enriched with gorgeous decorations of all sorts and treasure incalculable in gold and jewels. Three great cathedrals were built, Salamanca, Segovia and Seville; Gothic in their general scheme, slender, fanciful, but with detail that verges more and more closely on Renaissance, as did all the art of the time, until we get such an extraordinary production as the front of Santiago da Compostella which is a Gothic project worked out wholly in terms of the Renaissance. Of these churches Seville is the most stupendous, one of the most imposing structures in the world. When it was projected the Cathedral Chapter put themselves on record as saying, "Let us build such a church that those that come after us will say we were mad." The judgment of posterity is more favourable than they had anticipated, for no one would attribute madness to the creators of this supreme work of art, but rather a sublime devotion and self-confidence that were

justified by their works. After having seen every great cathedral in the world except two, I give it as my judgment that the interior of Seville is the noblest of all. It is set out on a larger scale than any other and it is simpler in its general scheme. Where English cathedrals are threeaisled, and the French also, with one or two exceptional five-aisled examples such as Notre Dame and Bourges, this is no less than seven units in width, the outer aisles being divided into great chapels. The nave is fifty-three feet wide and one hundred and twenty-feet high, the doubled side aisles are thirty-six feet wide and their vaults rise to the same level of eighty-five feet. The wide spacing and enormous dimensions give an effect of sublimity that is unequalled, and the vast columns, no less than twelve feet in diameter, seem as slender as the stems of palm trees, an effect that is enhanced by the springing of the vaults of the side aisles in four directions like the curved fronds of the palms. The organism is of the simplest, with no triforium, simple vaults, very delicate pier-contours and mouldings, and a sparing use of windows,

from many of which the tracery has been removed, leaving simple lancets. The capitals are no more than narrow bands of carving, the arches do not overhang the shafts and are stilted for almost five feet. The effect is of sublime calm, solemn simplicity and a vital lifting into the air that find their equal nowhere else in the world. The colour is pearly, almost opalescent, the chapels are crowded with gilded altar pieces and innumerable pictures, while the great reredos fifty feet wide with ten foot returns, and an hundred feet high, is a solid mass of late Gothic sculpture in wood entirely covered with gold, now dulled to a luminous bronze. The three sides of the sanctuary and the entrance to the choir are filled with rejas or screens of richly wrought iron gilded, and the choir itself is surrounded by walls of coloured marble, alabaster and gilded metal.

If one were to choose the supreme works of Gothic architecture they would be, perhaps, the west front of Notre Dame, the chevet of Le Mans, the crossing tower of Gloucester, the interior of Seville and the general composition of Reims. There are many great church interiors in the world, Chartres, Bourges, Exeter, Westminster, Toledo, but Seville matches them all, and finally excels.

Although the names of all the great master builders of Spain have been preserved, there is one great omission; no one knows who created Seville, the culmination of all. His name is lost, perhaps forever, but he was unquestionably one of the great geniuses of all time. The two important churches that followed after Seville Salamanca and Segovia were built by Juan Gil de Hontañon and his son, who worked under the influence of the Andalucian wonder, and both have fine qualities, particularly in view of the fact that they were built at a time when all the rest of Europe had long given itself over to the Renaissance. Spain never really, as a people, outlived Mediaevalism. They are Mediaeval today, in the best sense, however modern and "progressive" may be Barcelona and Bilbao, however corrupt and inefficient the

parliamentary government at Madrid. Gothic architecture continued long after the Renaissance had conquered the rest of Europe, but in the end the art of the people could not stand against the new fashions that were supported by the Court and by the new nobility raised up on the foundation of the gold of the Indies; presently it vanished away and was replaced by the romantic Renaissance of the localized baroque and the dull formalism of the Court architects of Philip II.

XI.

NORMAN AND GOTHIC IN ENGLAND

I have left the consideration of Christian Architecture in England until the last, partly because it was more self-contained and definite than the other national variants of the original Gothic of France, and partly because it is more directly in our own line of succession. In many respects it diverges widely from all other forms while it is always more individualistic and varied. It does not inherit directly from France, in spite of William of Sens, but rather from Normandy, and it is in a way a working out in another land of what was initiated by William of Volpiano and Lanfranc, while continental Gothic is the reaction of French and Burgundian temper to the same motives. For one thing it never cares very much about logic and therefore the structural coherency and organism that obsessed the French make little appeal. Generally speaking, English Gothic is illogical and incoherent, while it varies greatly as between periods and even as between counties. English builders are constantly doing things that in comparison with Bourges or Soissons or the Sainte-Chapelle are illiterate, and yet it reaches heights of idealism and passionate poetry that have few equals. It was always trying for something it could never quite achieve, and in itself the effort is curiously appealing.

It all begins of course with the Norman abbeys, those low-lying, interminable structures that leave one wondering

at their use in a land where the whole population was probably less than that of London today. Of course the whole Christianity of England, from 1066 to 1500 was woven through and through with monasticism, and with few exceptions the great churches were all attached to religious houses. Nor were they for the use of the monks alone, who seldom numbered as many as an hundred in any one house; they belonged almost equally to all the people within walking or riding distance, for the monks were the teachers, leaders and defenders of the people. Big as were such churches as Glastonbury, St. Albans, Winchester, Canterbury, Durham, they were filled many times in a year by a larger congregation than assembles in the fashionable churches of a modern metropolis, and as they were always being lengthened or extended, the inference would be that they were too small even then. If a church were a place of pilgrimage it could never be built large enough, so great were the crowds that besieged it. Moreover in those days all the people went to church all days, where now a few satisfy themselves with an hour on Sunday morning. Even a few million people with whom church-going is chronic, means a good deal of space to accommodate them, so it is not surprising that England should have been covered for five centuries with her "white robe of churches," which includes not only monastic houses, but cathedrals, parish churches, and guild and chantry-chapels without number. With more than half of them gone, the rest are now far too big for a population ten times as numerous.

The Norman of England is more varied than that of Normandy, and more supple, though it is static so far as structural development is concerned, never paralleling the course that was followed in Normandy and France which led almost inevitably, and by swift changes, to the perfected Gothic. It is very splendid and mobile at Glastonbury, Ely, Peterborough, Tewksbury, Durham, but in the end it is structurally where it was in the beginning, though overlaid with most