s made (Fig. 26). The next step was the addition of
some simple moulding to the advancing angle of each rim of such a
series of arches either forming a bead (Fig. 27) or a chamfer.

In the transitional part of the twelfth century and the E. E. period
this process went on till at last, though the separate receding arches
still continued to exist, the mouldings[21] into which they were cut
became so numerous and elaborate as to render it often difficult to
detect the subordination or division into distinct planes which really
remained.

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--DOORWAY, KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.
(15TH CENTURY.)]

This passion for elaborate mouldings, often extraordinarily undercut,
reached its climax in the thirteenth century, the E. E. period. In the
Dec. period, while almost everything else became more elaborate,
mouldings grew more simple, yet hardly less beautiful. In the Perp.
period they were not only further simplified, but often impoverished,
being usually shallow, formal, and stiff.[22]

Ornaments abounded, and included not only enrichments in the shape of
carved foliage and figures, statuary, mosaics, and so forth, but
ornamental features, such as canopies, pinnacles, arcades, and
recesses (Fig. 28).

In each period these are distinct in design from all that went before
or came after, and thus to catch the spirit of any one Gothic period
aright, it is not enough to fix the general shapes of the arches and
proportions of the piers but every feature, every moulding, and every
ornament must be wrought in the true spirit of the work, or the result
will be marred.

_Stained Glass._

Ornamental materials and every sort of decorative art, such as mosaic,
enamel, metal work and inlays, were freely employed to add beauty in
appropriate positions; but there was one ornament, the crowning
invention of the Gothic artists, which largely influenced the design
of the finest buildings, and which reflected a glory on them such as
nothing else can approach: this was stained glass.

So much of the old glass has perished, and so little modern glass is
even passable, that this praise may seem overcharged to those who have
never seen any of the best specimens still left. We have in the choir
at Canterbury a remnant of the finest sort of glass which England
possesses. Some good fragments remain at Westminster, though not very
many; but to judge of the effect of glass at its best, the student
should visit L