Chapter XII: Appendix (4)

Perhaps the best example of later work in the city is the fine church of the Minorites, a good fourteenth century building, with a lofty and elegant lead turret rising out of the centre of the roof.

I found in several of the Cologne churches services in the morning, attended exclusively by children. They had no seats, but a succession of boards, with small kneeling-stools at regular intervals, were provided for them. The singing was uncommonly good and hearty, and after one of the services (at S. Maria in Capitolio), I asked the children about it, and they told me that they went every day before school. I looked at some of their school-books, and found that they had a rather full Scripture history abridgment; and among other books one full of songs and hymns, which seemed to be particularly good and spirited--hearty, merry songs, which would be sure to take with children. We should do well if we could have such a service and such books for our English children.

There was an exhibition of early German pictures of considerable interest in the old hall called the Gurzenich. I found that it was organized by a Christian Art Society, which has a large number of members, and seems to be very actively at work. In the great hall of the Gurzenich is a magnificent fire-place, of late middle-pointed date, and much like the Courtrai fire-place in general idea; there are some very spirited figures in armour in its niches. This building is well known on the exterior by its general ancient character, and particularly by the lead canopies over the figures in its lowest stage.

But Cologne is too well known to make any more of my notes (which might be extended to tenfold length) palatable; and I shall, therefore, hurry on to what is, I believe, newer ground to most ecclesiologists than are its time-honoured and well known buildings.

From Deutz (the bridge to which place from Cologne affords the best general view of the city) a few hours of railway took me to Hamm, and thence by a branch I reached Münster. The country here is cheerful and English-looking; though rather flat, it is woody and well cultivated, and thickly populated,--at least, so I gathered by the multitude of passengers who swarmed at every station, all in blue smocks, and all smoking vehemently.

The churches and domestic buildings at Münster are almost equally interesting. Of the latter, the Rathhaus is the most remarkable. It is very elaborate and beautiful in all its details, but (like most of the house-fronts here) boasts of a regular show front. The ground stage consists of four open arches; the next, of four richly-traceried windows, divided by figures in niches, carved with great spirit; and above this is an immense stepped gable-end, divided into seven panels in width, and rising to about twice the height of the real roof. It is pinnacled, and filled with open traceries, which, being pierced above the roof, show the sky through their openings. The lower part of the building is of the best middle-pointed, but in the gable some of the tracery is ogee and poor.

This front was followed in Münster throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, as also by the Renaissance school, so that the whole town is full of arcaded streets, like an Italian town, and all the houses have more or less exaggerated fronts, stepped and pinnacled high above the roof-line. The _tout ensemble_ of such a town, it may be imagined, is picturesque in the extreme, though not so valuable as at first sight it seems likely to prove to the architectural traveller. The endless repetition of the same--and that a bad--idea, is very tiresome, and so, beautiful as is the Rathhaus in some of its detail, and striking as it certainly is in its general effect, I have not forgiven it as being the first example with which I am acquainted of a long series of barbarisms.

The only old apartment in this building, so far as I could discover, is a room called the Frieden-Saal. It is a low council-chamber, of late date, which has been most elaborately restored, and renovated with much rich colour. There are some very good hinges and locks on a series of closets here.

Of the churches, there are some five or six old, besides some modern. The cathedral is very curious. Its plan shows two western towers, then a transept; a nave of two (!) very wide bays; transept again; and an apsidal choir, with several apsidal chapels round its aisle. The internal effect of the nave is singular. It is very simple, but from the great width of the bays rather bold-looking. The most notable things here are,--a very noble brass font; a brass corona in the choir; a stand for eleven candles, also in the choir; a magnificent stone rood-screen of late date; a very good _Sakraments-Häuslein_, and some niches for relics, etc., with their old doors; another stand for lights, something like that at S. Cunibert, Cologne; and some stalls of the seventeenth century, founded very closely upon mediaeval examples. The brass font is circular, supported upon five lions, the two eastern of which are standing, the others recumbent. The stem is covered with tracery and moulding, and the bowl has five large quatrefoiled circles, the eastern containing the Baptism of our Lord, and the other four the emblems of the four Evangelists, with scrolls and inscriptions in red letters; above them, a trefoiled arcade contains half-figures of the twelve Apostles. The corona is large, containing fifty candles in one row; but it is of late date, and frittered away in elaborate tracery and crocketing. The rood-screen has two doorways--one on each side of an altar in the centre of its west front. This altar still remains, with a sculpture of the Crucifixion at its back, but is not used now, a modern altar having been put up in front of it. Two very light open staircases on the eastern side of the screen lead to the Gospel and Epistle sides of the loft. There is also a very fine and large crucifix against one of the nave piers.

The main entrance to the cathedral is through a sort of Galilee of Romanesque date adorned with a number of fine statues; this is at the south-west of the church, whilst on its north side are some fair middle-pointed cloisters.

Next to the cathedral in importance is the Oberwasser-Kirche, a late middle-pointed building; it has a large south-west tower very much of the same type as the great tower at Ypres, having four windows of two lights in each stage, and four stages all exactly alike, and above them an octagonal belfry stage of later date. The first example of this kind of design is seen in the four belfry windows of the cathedral at Soest, and still more remarkably in the steeple of Paderborn cathedral, but here it is developed into even greater regularity. This design, however, is poor in kind, and only respectable when characterized as at Soest and Paderborn by massive simplicity. The south door of the Oberwasser-Kirche is good, being double with square openings within an arched head. Internally the church is very lofty and light, but of no great length, and has an eastern apse, and some traces of old wall painting. A very good brass water vat hung from a small crane by the north door and served as a stoup for holy water; this is a common plan in the Münster churches.[80]

This church was being scraped of paint and whitewash; so also in the cathedral they were removing some trumpery work of the last century, and indeed generally in this district a good deal is being done to the finer churches, and in most of them a box is provided for offerings for the restoration of the fabric: in most, I should say, which are not “evangelical”:--for in these, save where the government is repairing the stone work, they seem to be satisfied to put up pews and galleries, to keep the doors well locked, and to make their interiors look as cold, miserable, and repulsive as possible. Happily, however, the “evangelical” church is not very actively mischievous in architectural matters, and so one sees altars and reredoses still standing with candles and crucifixes, and curtains of white muslin or silk on each side, sometimes, as in the Petri-Kirche at Soest, double, first, on each side of the altar, and then the same height as the altar, and coming forward the full width of the footpace![81] In the old altars, there are always arrangements for closets--generally at one end--whilst in the middle of the back of the altar is often an opening, which I fancied might have been made for the reception of relics, but which seldom seems carefully enough fastened; the ends of the super-altars have also, very frequently, closets; generally speaking, the altars in this district are solid masses of masonry with a projecting and moulded mensa. This, however, is a digression, and I must now say somewhat of the Lamberti-Kirche, which is next to the cathedral the best church in Münster. Externally it has a western tower[82] of considerable dimensions dwarfed in appearance by the immense size of the roof which covers both nave and aisles; this is a not uncommon arrangement in this district, and has a parallel, as will be remembered, in the noble choir of S. Laurence at Nuremberg. Its main result is the great internal effect of height in the aisles and the opportunity it affords of obtaining what Germans were so fond of--an immense length of window opening. The entrance to S. Lambert on the south side is by a very beautiful doorway; the doorway itself is not very large but its jamb mould runs up to a great height and encloses a fine sculptured tree of Jesse; the branches of the tree form a series of medallions, in each of which is a half figure; the whole is very rich in its effect, and the sculpture quite exquisite. Internally the only remarkable piece of furniture I noted was a very fine rood. The proportions and arrangements of the church are very similar to those of the famous Wiesen-Kirche, at Soest, which I shall have presently to describe, and mainly noticeable for the great effect of unbroken space, owing to the large span and great height of the arches, and the small number of piers supporting the roof.

Two other churches near this afforded little worth notice. One of them was Protestant, and as a consequence, was elaborately pewed and galleried; it was seven or eight bays in length, and groined throughout, and entered by a good double door. The other was very similar, and had a curious kind of narthex under the western tower.

The Ludgeri-Kirche is of more interest, having a fine octagonal belfry of late date; this was undergoing repair, as was also the church, whose nave is of simple Romanesque with a good middle-pointed apse. There is another church of small size with an eastern apse, and a very low gabled tower at the north-west angle. This is near the railway station.

For two things besides her domestic buildings Münster is certainly to be remembered: these are the brass work and the sculpture; the latter is generally remarkably good, and I think I have seldom seen more spirited figures than I saw there.

In a silversmith’s shop, opposite the Lamberti-Kirche, I found a magnificent old monstrance, of the fourteenth century, and of very elaborate detail; it belonged to a church some miles distant, the name of which I have forgotten; this man was making church plate in very fair fashion, copying old examples with some care and with a good deal of feeling and enthusiasm; I need hardly say that such men are as rare on the Continent as they are here.

From Münster I returned to Hamm, and thence by another branch railway to Soest, travelling through a country without any feature by which to remember it save its interminable rows of poplars.

The first view of Soest from the railway is striking; several steeples, of which that of the cathedral is the grandest, stand up well behind a bank of trees, and a great extent of picturesque and half-ruined old town walls.

The town itself is very curious, much more like some large Swiss village, such as one remembers in the Upper Valais or the Hasli-Thal, than any other cathedral town that I know in northern Europe. The streets are all absurdly irregular, bending and twisting about in every possible direction, and full of half-timbered houses, which are all corbelled forward and seem generally to be very ancient. I think, indeed, that I have never seen more picturesque grouping of old buildings, but it is difficult to imagine how they can have preserved their old character so intact; there is absolutely, I believe, not one shop with a shop front or display of its wares of any kind, and hardly more than one modernized house, and this is a smart little inn with a nice garden, and a large Speise-Saal whose walls were literally covered with English prints, many of them old and very good. The population of the place consists nevertheless of some seven or eight thousand persons.

The churches have some very remarkable features, of which the most singular is a kind of narthex at the west end, not forming part of the fabric, but built within the churches, the main groining extending on over it to the west end, and a large gallery being formed above it. The best example of this is in S. Peter’s, and I shall leave, for the present, a detailed description of it.

The cathedral is a great, rude, desolate-looking church with but few remains of any interest, save at the west end, out of the centre of which rises a fine simple Romanesque steeple. This has five single-light windows in the stage above the roof, and four three-light windows above them. Then above this belfry stage is on each face a steep gable, filled in with openings of varied shapes--on one side, a large circular window, with three other small openings, and on another side three large windows of three lights, and a very small circular window. These gables are not the full width of the tower, and from the angles between them rise four tall and massive pinnacles, slightly ornamented with corbel tables under the eaves, and covered with steep pyramidal metal roofs. The spire is of metal, octagonal in section,--the angles of the octagon springing from the apices of the four gables, and from the internal angles of the four pinnacles. The size and solidity of this remarkable tower give great grandeur to it, and whilst in the treatment of its lower part we see the type of so many of the towers of later date in this district, in that of the spire we see the precursor of those noble spires rising from simple gabled towers which are the glory of Lüneburg and Lübeck.

In addition to an internal narthex, the cathedral has, in front of its tower, another groined sort of passage-way, opening to the west with six arches, and to the north and south with one arch. There is a second stage above these arches, and then from behind this mass rises the steeple. The whole of this part of the building is Romanesque, as, indeed, is the substance of the entire church though it has been much mutilated by modern additions and alterations. The interior is painfully neglected and dirty, though it is, I believe, the only Catholic church in the place. The eastern apse has upon its groining some painting, which seems to be ancient and very good, having figures of saints etc., on a large scale, but it is very much hidden by an odious modern reredos. There is a good wooden crucifix against one of the piers, and some fine very early glass in the transepts windows. Early in the morning, when I went again into the cathedral I found it full of people singing well and very heartily.

The church of S. Peter stands close to the cathedral; and its choir and aisles, ending with three apses and steep slated roofs, its windows filled with middle-pointed traceries, with the old steeple at the west end capped with a modern bulbous spire, group very picturesquely with the stern and grand steeple of the cathedral. In plan it consists of a nave and aisles, of four primary bays (each bay being subdivided by two arches opening into the aisles), transepts, choir and apsidal choir-aisles, opening into the transepts. The two western bays of the nave are again subdivided into three divisions north and south, and four divisions east and west; all this space being groined over at a low level, and having a floor above, forming a gallery level with the triforium, which also is large and spacious. The internal effect of this low, dark entrance-way is most peculiar. In S. Peter’s, its length from east to west is nearly 46 feet--just half the whole length of the nave! The architecture of the church generally is not otherwise very interesting; though the east end is good, and has some fragments of fair glass still remaining. I have already mentioned the curious arrangement of the curtains on each side of the Lutheran altar here.

S. Paul’s is another church of precisely the same type. It has a good western steeple, with a very steep square roof, or rather, I should say, a low spire. The stages of the tower are repetitions of each other. Both this church and S. Peter’s are disfigured by a wonderful accumulation of pews and galleries; there is still, however, in the sacristy, a very good press, of three divisions in width and two in height.

I come, last, to the Wiesen-Kirche, a most remarkable building, of whose history, I am sorry to say, I know absolutely nothing. It appears, however, to have been all erected at one period--in the first half of the fourteenth century,--and its scale is so fine, and its character throughout so good, that it is certainly one of the most noticeable churches in the north of Germany. Moreover, in internal effect, I think I know no church of the same size which can vie with it for exquisite grace and elegance and, at the same time, boldness and grandeur of conception.

The plan may be described as a nave and aisles, of only three bays in length, about 76 feet in width, and 100 feet in length; the nave and aisles each terminating in an apse at the east, whilst at the west end there is an unfinished front, which seems to have been intended to have two towers. It is difficult to conceive how such a west front could ever have been suitable for a building which was in no other respect more than a mere chapel. It was never, however, at all nearly completed; and now a tall slated spire finishes one of the stunted towers in a fashion which is picturesque in the distant view, but very unsatisfactory when seen close at hand. The nave and aisles are covered with one great roof, and groined at the same level. The four nave columns are very lofty, and without any capitals; the mouldings being continuous to the groining; there being no more than four points of support in a square of about 76 by 120 feet, it may be imagined that from every point the whole interior is visible. The windows are of immense height, but judiciously treated, as in the clerestory windows at Cologne, by the arrangement of colour in the glass; besides which, a kind of transom of quatrefoils runs through all the windows at about one-fourth of the whole height. Below this transom, the glass is very rich and dark in colour; above the transom, for about half its height, there are figures under canopies, also dark with colour, and then a long sweep of beautiful grisaille runs up to the head of the windows, the patterns being all geometrical, and defined by delicate lines of colour: the whole is very jewelly and brilliant, and fortunately a good deal remains. This is, indeed, just one of those buildings which depends very much for its proper effect upon all its windows being filled with coloured glass. All the old altars remain, though the church is Protestant. There is one in each apse, and one against the west side of the two easternmost of the nave columns. All the altars have closets in their ends, and the one against the south-east column of the nave has a portion of a very good middle-pointed stone reredos and is itself richly panelled below the mensa. Behind another altar in the north-eastern apse, there is the remnant of a very fine middle-pointed rood of wood, which is now nailed up behind a late triptych. There is a very good early _Sakraments-Häuslein_ in the north wall, and a good locker in the south wall of the principal apse, both with old iron doors. On two side altars in the nave, there have been erected some very fine pieces of late tabernacle-work. They have been brought from elsewhere; and I saw no place in the church from which they can have been taken. Another similar piece of stone work has been set up in the midst of the choir, and a door pierced through it leads into a pulpit, which grows out of and rests on the Lutheran altar! The north and south doorways are very fine; the latter having a window above it within the same arch, in the common German fashion. The whole church has an open parapet and lofty buttresses, with rather small pinnacles. The view from the east is certainly very striking; and though the idea is completely that of a chapel, rather than of a more ambitious church, it is certainly one of the finest chapels of its size that I have ever seen. The whole building is being restored at the expense of the King of Prussia, and at, I should think, very great cost, as it had suffered much from decay.

V

GERMAN POINTED ARCHITECTURE

Some apology is necessary for venturing to attempt to grapple with so large a subject as is that of pointed architecture in Germany. My only excuse for making such an attempt must be the vivid recollection of the journeys I have at different times made in that country, and the desire to help cordially in explaining to those who have still the journey before them, the features which characterize its architecture.

I have unfortunately been unable to hear what Mr. Parker has told you of pointed architecture in France; but no doubt he has dilated with sufficient enthusiasm upon the exquisite art there seen, upon the skill in the disposition of the ground plans--never equalled elsewhere--upon the beauty and vigour of the sculpture, and upon the nervous manliness and at the same time delicacy of the art in nearly all the buildings of the best period, at least in the old Île-de-France, in Picardy, and in Normandy. I grieve to say that I shall be able to give no such commendation to German architecture, and that, delightful as the recollections of what I have seen there are, I cannot nevertheless shut my eyes to the fact that in most respects it is entirely inferior to the development of the same style in France and England.

There are at the same time some peculiarities in the dates of old German work which are rather striking in comparison with English and French works.

You have, then, first of all, a few buildings, such as the convent at Lörsch, which are said to be and perhaps are of Roman design. Then next there is an immense group of churches of which those of Cologne and the Rhineland are the most distinguished examples, which, whilst it is entirely unlike anything in the rest of northern Europe, has a most remarkable affinity to the Lombard churches in the north of Italy, at Pavia, Bergamo, and elsewhere. These churches date from the early part or the middle of the twelfth century and continue with but little alteration of importance down to the end of the thirteenth, when the strange spectacle is seen of a style almost completely Romanesque in its character suddenly supplanted by another style which, so far as I can see, in no way grew out of it, and which is distinguished from the first by peculiarities of a most marked kind, and by the perfect and complete form which it at once assumed. Then after this style, which again in its turn retained its hold longer than our styles ever did, and which to a late period is altered only slightly in its detail, you will find another essentially German style answering in point of date to our later third-pointed and to French flamboyant. The Germans have therefore less natural growth to show in their architecture than we have. Instead of our beautiful gradations from Romanesque to third-pointed in which the germ of each development is to be discovered in the antecedent work, you have there a series of breaks or gaps in the chain which it is very difficult to account for, and which make the study of the style highly interesting, and at the same time somewhat perplexing.

The question seems naturally to arise whether each of these new styles, thus wanting in evidence of natural growth one out of the other, is to be looked at as a German invention in the true sense of the word, or as the result of the sudden conversion of a slow and sluggish people to the beauties of foreign work, and then their resolute and hearty earnestness in the attempt to make the style their own by some infusion of national peculiarities.

I incline to this last opinion because I believe that no style was ever invented. Architecture has always grown gradually and systematically, and it is quite possible to imagine that Germany may have refused to follow the lead of France and England in art until their superiority was so great as to make it an absolute matter of necessity, and that then an attempt would be made to give a national character to what they had in the first place borrowed.

A slight comparison of dates of a few buildings will explain my grounds for speaking as I do of German architecture.

Of the Rhine churches the most remarkable are the work of the thirteenth century. S. Gereon at Cologne was commenced A.D. 1200 and vaulted in A.D. 1227. S. Cunibert was in building from A.D. 1205 to A.D. 1248, when it was consecrated. Naumburg has a nave of A.D. 1200. Limburg is early in the thirteenth century; and Bamberg the same; whilst Gelnhausen was in building from A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1370. Now all these churches are of such a character that were we to see them in France we should at once put them down as the work of the end of the twelfth century, and we should look for another class to fill up the period between A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1270, when Cologne was commenced or the nave of Strasburg completed. You will see how important these dates are when you consider that at the same time that S. Gereon and S. Cunibert at Cologne, the choir of Magdeburg, and Gelnhausen, were being built, Amiens cathedral, S. Denis and other churches of the same kind were rising throughout France, whilst in England Westminster and a host of other churches of late first-pointed were built at the same time. I do not mean to say absolutely that no transitional buildings are to be found, but only that they were of extraordinary rarity and do not afford the same evidence of natural growth that our own do.

Of work really similar to our own first-pointed I can hardly give you more than one example, and that at Lübeck in the north porch of the cathedral, where--to say the least--the paternity of the work may well be doubtful. Of a later style and almost unique in its character, is the fine church of S. Elizabeth, at Marburg, a church whose date is well known (A.D. 1235 to A.D. 1283), and which affords us one of the few German examples of a style intermediate between the work at S. Gereon and that of Cologne cathedral. This will be seen by the sketches[83] which I have here, in which, however, it is to be observed that the design of the nave and apsidal terminations of the choir and transepts are the early portions of the work, and that the fittings and west front date nearer the end of the century. In the still beautiful reredos I think we may see the traces of an incipient departure from the style of the earlier work, and an approach to identity with what I must consider as the inferior art of the thorough German Gothic, as it is seen in its perfection in the cathedral at Cologne.

The aisles of the nave of Magdeburg cathedral seem also to me to be vastly superior to any other German work of the date that I know, whilst the western rood-screen and some of the details of the western choir at Naumburg are also of a degree of beauty which it would be very difficult to surpass elsewhere. The aisles of Paderborn cathedral, too, are of a peculiar but exceedingly good character. But these are, as I think, only exceptions which serve to prove the rule, and cannot in any degree be taken as evidence of the same kind of growth and gradual development that we trace with so much interest in every church and building of the Middle Ages in England. It was an architecture of fits and starts and conceits, not of growth, and full therefore of the contradictions and eccentricities which such a condition necessarily involves. And now having so far paved the way by a short statement of what is really the great peculiarity of German architecture, I will go on to consider and describe the several varieties of the style rather more in detail.

And first of all, as to the ground-plan. It is a curious fact, that each national style of pointed architecture has been distinguished by its adherence to some peculiarity of ground-plan, as well as by other distinctive features. In England, we all know how great was the love for the square east end, and how strong the desire to extend the length of the nave to a sometimes almost unreasonable extent. In France, you know how steadily the apsidal termination was adhered to, and how completely it was the rule to have an aisle and chapels round the apse, making, in some of the finer French churches, an approach to absolute perfection of effect. You know, too, how very rare the square east end was in France, and yet how equally rare was any but a square end to the transepts. In Italy, again, there are peculiarities. Either you have immense halls, wide and long beyond all other examples, and borrowed, no doubt, from the ancient basilica; or apsidal churches, in which the aisles do not extend round the apse, and a series of apsidal chapels are sometimes added to the east of the transepts.

In Germany, as I shall show, we have an equally distinct class of ground-plans. The apsidal termination, though most general, does not altogether supplant the square end; but it is remarkable, that unlike the beautiful chevets of the French churches, the German apses are rarely surrounded with aisles or chapels. They are either simply apsidal, or parallel triapsidal, or transverse triapsidal, and the main difference between early and late examples, is to be found in the introduction of that angularity which gradually became the great feature of all German work. The early apsidal terminations were all circular: as, for instance, in the Apostles’ church, at Cologne; whilst in Marburg, and later, in the little chapel of S. Werner, at Bacharach, though the transverse triapsidal plan is identical in other respects, it differs in that the apses are polygonal, instead of circular. At Bonn, the eastern apse is circular, the transeptal apse polygonal; and you may always take this as one of the certain evidences of later date, in works which may otherwise very nearly correspond.

Of parallel triapsidal churches, the church at Laach, and S. James at Ratisbon, are early examples; whilst Ratisbon cathedral, S. Catherine, Lübeck, the Marien-Kirche at Muhlhausen, and the Wiesen-Kirche at Soest, are examples of the same plan angularized at a later day. And you should note, that this parallel triapsidal plan is by far the most common of German plans in all ages, and is, moreover, one of which scarcely any examples exist out of Germany.[84]

Sometimes, as in S. Nicholas, Lemgo, whilst the choir is apsidal, the east end of the aisles is square; but this is a rather rare and very bad plan. In all these varieties of arrangement, there is no comparison for a minute with the beauty of the French chevet; but it is right to observe, that there are some examples of imitation of this better type.

One of the earliest and most interesting, is the church of S. Godehard, at Hildesheim, in which we have the aisle round the apse, with three apsidal chapels, as well as apsidal chapels east of the transepts. This plan was imitated in the grand parish church of S. James, also at Hildesheim, at a much later date. The apse of Magdeburg cathedral is very much like that of S. Godehard, but of rather later date, and remarkable for the profusion of dogtooth in its cornices. In both, it is to be observed that the small chapels round the apse are mere excrescences, and finish with stone roofs below the parapet of the aisle. The Marien-Kirche at Lübeck is a later example of a chevet, whilst at Cologne cathedral, in emulation of Amiens, a plan of the best kind was adopted, and again wrought out on a smaller scale at Altenberg. There can be little doubt that it was not only in emulation but also in imitation of a French church, that this plan was designed. Scarcely another German church is at all like it, whereas its plan was the common one in France. In the Marien-Kirche at Lübeck, where there is an aisle round the apse, it is formed in the most clumsy manner, by enlarging the chapels; whilst S. Giles, at Brunswick, illustrates another and unsuccessful plan, viz., an apse, with the surrounding aisle, but no chapels.

I believe one of the reasons for this difference between French and German plans is to be found in the very remarkable objection which the Germans always exhibited to any departure from correct orientation of any of their altars. In the French chevet, it is impossible to attend to this; and hence, in a country where the feeling was strong on the point, it would be felt to be an unsuitable form. I believe that it was so felt in England, where, to the present day, the prejudice in favour of strict orientation is stronger than in any other country in Europe.

In Germany, we have most remarkable evidence of the feeling. At Magdeburg, for example, the altars in the apse of the cathedral are all placed with their fronts facing due west, and cutting, therefore, in the strangest way across all the main architectural lines of the building. It was for this reason that the parallel triapsidal plan was so popular.

But there is another most curious arrangement of plan, to which I must refer; that, namely, of which Laach, Bamberg, Worms, Mayence, S. Sebald, Nuremberg, and Naumburg, are remarkable examples, in which both east and west ends have apsidal choirs. The object of these western choirs is not very intelligible; but in that at Naumburg, we have most curious evidence of what I have before referred to: for the original altar in the western apse faces west, and has its back, therefore, towards the nave, so that the face of the priest at the altar would be seen by the congregation in the nave.

I ought to have observed, in speaking of some examples of apses with aisles, that even in these, the treatment was essentially German. The two churches at Nuremberg are examples which, as the aisles are of the same height as the choir, and the whole roofed over with one immense roof, present the appearance on the exterior of immense apses without aisles. And certainly there is great grandeur of effect in such a termination, though less structural truth, and less internal variety and beauty. Still, they are admirable departures from ordinary rules. The churches at Münster, S. Stephen at Vienna, Munich cathedral, Landshut, and the Wiesen-Kirche at Soest, are examples of the same kind of design. They have a very fine effect of simple unbroken height, but the absence of the triforium and clerestory is not forgiven, whilst the plan helped to develop that German extravagance of proportion in the length of the window monials which we so often have to deplore.

And here I must not forget to tell you of the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the church of S. Gereon, at Cologne, in which the naves are circular and decagonal, of great size and grand effect, with long choirs running out to the east.

In the earlier churches western transepts are also not uncommon, as at S. Cunibert, S. Andrew, and S. Pantaleon at Cologne, S. Paul at Worms, Mayence, and many other examples; whilst towers of small size were commonly placed in the re-entering angles, between the nave, and choir, and transepts, as well as over their intersections.

Lastly, there is a plan of common occurrence, especially among smaller churches, in which the main building is a large and lofty parallelogram, with a small apse tacked on at the end, without any regard to proportion. There are two or three of these churches in Nuremberg, and many elsewhere.

I have detained you for a long time on the subject of ground-plans, but it is one of importance to the right understanding of any style of church architecture, and it was not possible therefore to pass it over.

I will now ask you to consider, a little in detail, the characteristics of the early German work. I do not intend to go thoroughly into the question of pure Romanesque work, for which I have no time. I am dealing with pointed architecture, and must confine myself as much as possible to it only. We may take the early churches at Cologne, and along the banks of the Rhine, as examples of the kind of work which is perhaps the most interesting, and very thoroughly German in all its characteristics. It was derived, as I have no doubt, from the churches in Lombardy, with which it has very many features absolutely identical. The churches at Pavia are beyond all question the prototypes of those at Cologne; but it is to be observed that their scale is smaller, and, their effect certainly not so fine.

S. Castor at Coblentz, at the end of the twelfth century, Andernach a little later, Zinzig, S. Gereon and S. Cunibert, Cologne, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, give us a fairly complete evidence of the succession of styles. After these we have Limburg and Gelnhausen, taking us on to the time at which the German complete Gothic was in other places in full perfection.

In the early churches there are many features worthy of remark:--

First, the curiously early development of a kind of heavy cusping, of which Worms, Zinzig, Boppart, Andernach, and S. Gereon at Cologne, are good examples. It is essentially German, and I know nothing like it out of the Rhine district.

Secondly, the treatment of the apsidal terminations is very remarkable. S. Castor at Coblentz, e.g., at the end of the twelfth century, has three stages in its apse, whereof that next the ground has a trefoiled arcade, the next is pierced with round-headed windows, whilst under the eaves is a recessed arcade and a cornice, which, in one form or other, was almost the invariable finish of these early apses. Zinzig has the same kind of apse, but it is polygonal, and each side is gabled. The eaves-cornice has a row of square sunk panels below it; and this singular feature we see reproduced very often, as at S. Gereon. The apse at Andernach is nearly identical with that at Coblentz, as also is that of Bonn. The fine cathedral at Worms has a very singular arrangement. The apse is polygonal, with the eaves-cornice and ground arcade as at Coblentz, but in the intermediate stage it has circular windows, filled in with quatrefoils and sexfoils. The apse and steeple of S. Martin, at Cologne, are extremely noble examples of these portions of the early German churches. Generally speaking, these early apsidal terminations are most remarkable for their similarity of design, but their external effect is, nevertheless, always striking.

The third and chief feature of the early German churches is the treatment of their steeples. They are square or octangular in plan, without buttresses, arcaded or pierced with windows pretty regularly all over their surface, and roofed in the most varied manner. You are all, no doubt, familiar with some examples of these really striking towers, and you will feel, I think, that in their whole composition they generally look too much like turrets, and are often too uniform in their height to be perfectly satisfactory. The towers were often gabled, and had square spires rising from the points of the gables; or, as in the fine example at Soest, they had octagonal spires. This Soest example has great interest: it is the first perfect example, so far as I know, of a long series of very remarkable steeples. At Paderborn, indeed, there is no doubt that the tower had a spire; but it is destroyed, and Soest is therefore the more interesting. At a later date, this kind of steeple was reproduced at Lüneburg and Lübeck, in the steeples which adorn their churches.

The variety of ornamental moulding is less, I think, in Germany than in either England or France; but there are some fine examples of carving in capitals and string-courses of early date at Naumburg and Magdeburg.

The groining of early German churches is generally simple. The lanterns, where central, are covered in with a plain kind of domical vault; and the apses have generally hemispherical groining, sometimes marked with ribs. The vaulting is first of all plain waggon-vaulting, then simple quadripartite, and sometimes--especially where (as is often the case in Germany) one bay of the groining covers two bays of the nave--it is sexpartite, and generally then very much raised in the centre.

Doorways are almost invariably square-headed, under pointed arches. In the north porch of Lübeck cathedral, as also at Andernach, and at S. Cunibert, and again at S. Gereon, Cologne, is a very peculiar doorhead, formed by two straight lines sloping to the centre at a very obtuse angle.

The windows are generally of a very simple and rude kind. There was no approach in their treatment to that delicacy which is such an especial characteristic of our English first-pointed; and this mainly because the science of mouldings was never worked out thoroughly by the early German school. It is true that no school of architects has ever rivalled the English in this particular; and one reason, perhaps, for this is to be found in the resolute way in which foreigners resisted any modification of the square abacus, whose only fault was, no doubt, the limitation it imposed upon the outline of mouldings.

One other feature of these churches must not be forgotten, viz., the great size of their triforia. This was usual all over Europe in Romanesque buildings; but in Germany in this, as in other things, the early tradition was long adhered to, and you have nowhere else such elaborate constructional galleries as theirs. Even in works of the latest date they are found,--as, for instance, in the curious church of S. Andrew, at Frankfort, where the outer aisles are galleried all round with a triforium, the arches in front of which are about twice the height of the main arches below them. The interior of Andernach cathedral will explain how grand the treatment of this feature was in the earliest buildings.

I trust I have said enough now to show you, at any rate, the general characteristics of early German work. Its great marks of distinction from French and English work are to be seen mainly in its planning, the treatment and number of its towers and spires, and in the peculiarly Italian character of its apsidal terminations; and, as I have said, this style prevailed, with but little modification, up to the very time at which the completely developed German middle-pointed made its appearance.

I suppose the characteristics of this later work must be known to most of you. Cologne cathedral is in fact so completely an embodiment of nearly all the essential features of the style, and is so well known to most people that I suspect less description is required of it than of any other foreign style. It has been often said--and that by no mean authorities--that the German middle-pointed was identical with our own, and indeed that this one style prevailed for a time all over Europe. The theory would be pretty if it were true: the gradual working up to the same point in various ways, and the gradual divergence of art again in different directions, would certainly be a strong ground for giving in our adhesion to this one perfect and universal style. But I confess that though there is something of a _similarity_, I have not been able to trace anything like an identity between German and French and English work at any time. I am thankful for this because, with all its beauty, the best German middle-pointed style is not a great style, and has many and obvious defects. From the very first is conspicuous that _love of lines_ which is so marked and so unpleasant a peculiarity in German art, and that desire to play with geometrical figures--I know not how else to express what I mean--which in time degenerated into work as pitiful and contemptible as any of which mediaeval architects were ever guilty.

I have here a large collection (which should have been larger had I had time to select all the examples which I have scattered through my sketch-books) of German window traceries, which will enable you to judge whether I am too severe in my opinion of their demerits. And you may observe, by the way, that whilst in the earlier styles we have very many points for consideration in studying the characteristics of the style, in this work there is a sacrifice of almost everything else to the desire to introduce in every direction specimens of new and ingenious combinations of tracery. The windows at Paderborn are some of the finest and purest examples of early tracery. They are genuine and noble examples, and quite free from any tinge of the faults of later examples, and worthy of comparison with the best of our own early traceries. The mouldings of these windows are simple, but composed mainly of a succession of bold rolls, and so entirely free from any _lininess_. In the cupola of S. Gereon at Cologne, and a little later in its sacristy are also some good early traceries, whilst most of the windows at Marburg are also examples of the same character. So too are the traceries in one of the Brunswick west fronts, and in the apse of the church of S. Giles in the same city. From these look to the windows of S. Mary, Lemgo, and you have the commencement of the new style, though these are fine windows, boldly and simply conceived and carried out. Next to these come the marvellous series of traceries in Minden cathedral; a series, I suppose, quite unmatched for variety, and indeed, I must own, for a certain grandeur of effect, by those in any church in Europe. You will be struck, I think, by the curious desire for variety of arrangement which these traceries evidence. They are a series of aisle windows, placed side by side in a cathedral church of very modest pretensions. S. Martin in the same town has a great variety of traceries of a later type--good examples of the kind of tracery which henceforward is to be found for a long time predominant throughout nearly the whole of Germany, in which, whilst one admires and wonders at the ingenuity which has devised so many combinations of spherical triangles and circles, one is tempted to think that the men who excelled in this sort of work would have been admirably fitted for designing children’s toys and puzzles, but had much better have been kept away from church windows. Among the other sketches of traceries, those from Ratisbon are of the best kind, whilst those from the cloister at Constance (essentially German work) are almost as interesting as the Paderborn examples in their ingenious variety of form. They show too, occasionally, a tendency to ogee lines in the tracery, which leads me to say a few words on the curious fact, that whereas in England the ogee line was always seen in the later middle-pointed work, this was by no means the case in Germany. The tracery in the staircase to the Rathhaus at Ratisbon, though of late date, is noticeable for the almost entire absence of any but pure geometrical figures, but then these are thrown about in a confused and irregular manner, and are entirely wanting in due subordination of parts. When, however, the ogee line does show itself in German work, it is always a certain evidence of debasement.

But to leave the question of traceries and to justify my denial of the virtues of German pointed architecture, let me ask you to compare the effect of French and German work side by side in some of these most valuable evidences of facts which photography so liberally affords us. You have here side by side a west door from Amiens and from Cologne; and again here, some door-jamb sculpture from Amiens between similar works from Strasburg. Now striking as these German examples are, do you not see how entirely the Germans sacrifice all nobility and simplicity of expression, all that we call repose, to the vain desire to arrest attention by some tricky arrangement of a drapery and some quaint speckiness or lininess of detail?

The German love of tracery is evidenced by the fondness for such spires as that of Freiburg, which, striking as it is, is not altogether a legitimate kind of thing, and is certainly inferior in its effect to the much simpler spires of which we are so justly proud.

I can only say a few words as to the plans of German complete Gothic, and this only to repeat what I have before said as to the extent to which they contrived to build on the same plans as in earlier days. The parallel and transverse triapsidal plans were as popular in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as they were in the twelfth and thirteenth, of which the little chapel in the castle at Marburg is a curious example. It is apsidal at the east and west ends, and the bay between has the window-splay so contrived as to make another apse north and south. It was in detail more than in plan that the later architects developed.

But I feel that time will not allow me to go into the features of the style with more minuteness, or to do more than direct your attention to the strange eccentricity which characterizes the last phase of German Gothic, of which the design for the spire of Ulm (never carried out) is one of the most curious examples. In the short time that still remains to me, I would rather prefer to call your attention to the local peculiarities which you will meet with in different districts of this great country--a part of my subject which would, if I had time for it, be of more value perhaps to those who are going to explore German churches for themselves than any other.

I have said so much about the churches of Cologne and the Rhine, that I need say no more than that they are very much a class by themselves. You have there the best specimens of early churches; whilst in Cologne cathedral, in Altenberg abbey, in the church of the Minorites at Cologne--an admirable example--in the very interesting church at Oberwesel, and in S. Werner at Bacharach, a church at Andernach, and Frankfort cathedral, you have a series of examples within a short distance of each other of the best complete German Gothic.