istinguished for the splendid series of castles to which
allusion has been made in a previous chapter. They were erected at the
best time of English Gothic architecture (Edward I.) under English
direction, and are finely designed and solidly built. Wales can also
boast the interesting Cathedrals of Chester, Llandaff, St. David's,
and some smaller churches, but in every case there is little to
distinguish them from contemporary English work.

* * * * *

Ireland is more remarkable for antiquities of a date anterior to the
beginning of the Gothic period than for works belonging to it. A
certain amount of graceful and simple domestic work, however, exists
there; and in addition to the cathedrals of Kildare, Cashel, and
Dublin, numerous monastic buildings, not as a rule large or ambitious,
but often graceful and picturesque, are scattered about.

[Illustration: _Miserere Seat in Wells Cathedral._]

FOOTNOTES:

[23] For an example of these see the house of Jaques Coeur (Fig. 7).

[Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY.}]

CHAPTER VII.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE.

GERMANY.--CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH.

The architecture of Germany, from the twelfth to the sixteenth
centuries, can be divided into an early, a middle, and a late period,
with tolerable distinctness. Of these, the early period possesses the
greatest interest, and the peculiarities of its buildings are the most
marked and most beautiful. In the middle period, German Gothic bore a
very close general resemblance to the Gothic of the same time in
France; and, as a rule, such points of difference as exist are not in
favour of the German work. Late Gothic work in Germany is very
fantastic and unattractive.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--ABBEY CHURCH OF ARNSTEIN. (12TH AND 13TH
CENTURIES.)]

Through the twelfth, and part of the thirteenth centuries, the
architects of Germany pursued a course parallel with that followed in
France and in England, but without adopting the pointed arch. They
developed the simple and rude Romanesque architecture which prevailed
throughout Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and which they
learnt originally from Byzantine artists who fled from their own
country during the reign of the iconoclasts; and they not only carried
it to a point of elaboration which was abreast of the art of our best
Norman architecture, but went on further in the