Now, as, in the natural
growth of the human mind, the heart became more and more impregnated
with the beauty of holiness, and the prayers of men ascended with
somewhat of purer aspiration to heaven, so did they build their
tower-roofs higher and higher into the air, till at length the spire was
born. In one of those quaint antique towers of Normandy, Coutances, it
was first fully developed; and it is curious to see how in this
instance its roof-origin was still remembered: for it has tall, gabled
garret-windows rising from its base, connected by rude cross-bars to the
slope of the spire; and it has a kind of scaly mail, Ruskin says, which
is nothing more than the copying in stone of the common wooden shingles
of the house-roof. Now the proud Italian architects, disdainful though
they were of the arts of the rude Northern builders, could not but admit
the expressiveness of the pointed roof; so they placed a form of it on
some of their campaniles, as on those of Venice and Cremona, in both
these instances making it a third of the whole height. But the spire,
though an effective, was as yet an unambitious structure,--scarcely more
than an exaltation or an apotheosis of the roof.
Pages:
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237