Gothic Architecture And Operative Freemasonry.

" More than a century of anarchy and confusion followed this great event , and perhaps the period of the English wars may be considered as the most disastrous of the whole history of France , as the previous two centuries had been the most brilliant . When she delivered herself from these

troubles , she was no longer the same . The spirit of the middle ages had passed away . The simple faith and giant energy of the reigns of Philip Augustus and St . Louis were not to be found under Louis XL ( 1461 to 1483 ) and his inglorious

successors . With the accession of Francis I . ( in 1515 ) a new state of affairs succeeded , to the total obliteration of all that had gone before , at least in art .

"The improvement of architecture , keeping pace exactly with the improved political condition of the land , began with Louis Le Gros , and continued till the reign of Philip of Valois , ( 1328 to 1350 ) . It was during the two centuries

comprised within this period that the pointed architecture was invented , which became the style , not only of France , but of all Europe during the middle ages ; and is , par excellence , the Gothic style of Europe . The cause of this pre-eminence

is to be found partly in the mere accident of the superior power , at the critical period , of the nation to which the style belonged , and also because it was found the most fitted to carry out certain religious principles and decorative notions ,

which were prevalent at the time , and which will be noted as we proceed . " The style , therefore , with which this chapter is concerned is that which commenced with the

building of the Abbey of St . Denis by Suger , A . D . 1144 , which culminated with the building of the Ste . Cahpelle of Paris by St . Louis 1244 , and which received its greatest amount of finish at the completion of the Choir of St . Ouen , at Rouen , by Mark

d'Argent , in 1339 . There are pointed arches to be found in the central province , as well as all over France , before the time of the Abbd Sugev , but they are only the experiments of Masons struggling with a constructive difficulty ; and the pointed

style continued to be practised for more than a century and a half after the completion of the Choir of St . Ouen , but it was no longer the pure and vigorous style of the earlier period . It resembles more the efforts of a national style to

accommodate itself to new tastes and new feelings , and to maintain itself b y ill-suited arrangements against the innovation of a foreign style which was

to supersede it , but whose influence was felt long before its definite appearance . " The sources from which the pointed arch was taken have been more than once alluded to in the preceeding pages . It is a subject on which a great

deal more has been said and written than was at all called for by the real importance of the question . Scarcely anything was done in pointed architecture which had not already been done in the round-arched styles . Certainly there is nothing

which could not have been done , at least nearly as well , and many things much better , by adhering to the complete instead of the broken arch . The coupling and compounding of p iers had already been carried to great perfection , and the

assignment of a separate function to each shaft was already a fixed principle . Vaulting , too , was nearly perfect , only that the main vaults were either hexaparite or 6-celle d , instead of quadripartite , as they afterwards became ; an

improvement certainly , but not of much importance . Ribbed vaulting was the greatest improvement which the Mediaeval architects made on the Romanvaults , giving not only additional strength of

construction , but an apparent vigour and expression to the vault , which is one of the greatest beauties of the style . This system was in frequent use before the employment of the pointed arch . The different and successive phases of decoration

werealso one of the Mediasval inventions which were carried to greater perfection in the round Gothic styles than in the Pointed . Indeed , it is fact , that except window tracery , and perhaps pinnacles and flying buttresses , there is not a single

important feature in the Pointed Style that was not invented aud currently used before its introduction . Even of windows , which are the important features of the new style , by far the finest are the circular or wheel windows , which have

nothing pointed about them , * and always fit awkwardly into the pointed compartments in which they are placed . In smaller windows , too , by far the most beautiful and constructively appropriate tracery is that where circles

are introduced into the heads of the pointed windows ; but after hundreds of experiments and expedients , the difficulty of fitting these circles into spherical triangles , and the unpleasant form