Author: Schuyler Van Rensselaer

Publisher: General Books

Published: 2009-08

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780217486224

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1893 Excerpt: ... simple scheme of arcades without upper stories or vaults makes it seem quite unecclesiastic. It is an effect which was never exactly reproduced, either in or out of England, but which, by a scarcely strained comparison, more than one writer has called "almost Saracenic." 1 The side-walls of the Galilee have been raised and its windows have been enlarged and fitted with traceries. No west window gives an unobstructed outward view, but by a little effort we may get partial glimpses of the splendid panorama that stretched in front of the doorways of the church before the chapel was constructed. For the sake of this panorama the chapel came nigh to perishing a hundred years ago. The thrice notorious "restorer" Wyatt then proposed to pull it down and run a driveway around the cliff; and the dean had no thought of objecting until the Society of Antiquaries interfered. In this Durham Galilee, as before the portico of Peterborough and beneath the lantern which we shall find at Ely, we learn why English architecture has a singular charm for almost every tourist: it often shows him something that no knowledge of other things has led him to expect, --something quite individual, apart, and fresh. No one can anticipate how an English builder may have planned or designed any part of his construction. What his neighbors were doing was no bond upon him, as such bonds were usually felt in mediaeval years; nor did he always stop to think whether the fundamental laws of good construction or of good design would sanction his impulses. Sometimes he made a magnificent mistake, as in the Peterborough portico; sometimes he made a magnificent success, as in the Ely lantern; and sometimes, as in this Galilee at Durham, he produced a work which, although by no means a mistake, charms ...