A B C of Gothic Architecture

ox THE LATE, OR DEBASED, GOTHIC
BUILDINGS OP OXFORD.
EnoAr TUF. Reign of Elizabeth to the end of thr
Seventeenth
Centuky.
Gothic Atichitectdke seems to have attained its
ultimate perfection in the fourteenth century, at which
period everything belonging to it was conceived and
executed in a free and bold spirit, all the forms were
graceful and natural, and all the details of foliage and
other sculptures were copied from living types, with
a skill and truth of drawing which has never been
surpassed. Conventional forms were in a great measure
abandoned, and it seems to have been rightly and
truly
considered that the fittest monuments for the
House of God were faithful copies of His works; and
so long as this principle continued to be acted on, so
long did Gothic Architecture remain
But in
pure.
the succeeding century, under the later Henries and
Edwards, a gradual decline took place : everything
was molded to suit a preconceived idea, the foliage
lost its I'reshness, and was
molded into something of
a rectangular form; the arches were depressed, the
windows lowered, the flowing curves
of the tracery