smiths, and plumbers were carried to great perfection during the
Gothic period.

The appropriate ornamental treatment which each material is best
fitted to receive was invariably given to it, and forms appropriate
to one material were very rarely copied in others. For example,
whenever wrought iron, a material which can be beaten and welded, or
rivetted, was employed, those ornamental forms were selected into
which hot iron can with ease be beaten, and such groups of those forms
were designed as can be obtained by welding or by rivetting them
together.

Wood, on the other hand, cannot be bent with ease, but can be readily
cut, drilled with holes, notched and carved; accordingly, where wood
had to be treated ornamentally, we only find such forms as the drill,
the chisel, the saw, or the gouge readily and naturally leave behind
them.

Again, the mode into which wood can be best framed together was
carefully considered from a constructional point of view, and mediaeval
joiners' work is always first so designed as to reduce the damage from
shrinkage to the smallest amount possible; and the pieces of which it
is composed are then appropriately ornamented, moulded, or carved.

Stone is now always, at least in this country, worked by being first
squared and then worked-down or "sunk" from the squared faces to the
mouldings required, and this procedure seems to have been common,
though not quite universal, in the Middle Ages. Consequently we
usually find the whole of the external mouldings with which the
doorways and arcades of important buildings were enriched, designed so
as to be easily formed out of stones having squared faces, or, to use
the technical phrase, to be "sunk" from the squared blocks.

The character of sculpture in wood differs from that in stone, the
material being harder, more capable of standing alone; so in stone we
find more breadth, in wood finer lines and more elaboration.

In a word, no material was employed in simulating another (or with
the rarest exceptions), and when any ornament was to be executed in
one place in one material and in another place in a different one,
such alterations were always made in the treatment as corresponded to
the different qualities of the two materials.

The arch was introduced whenever possible, and the structure of a
great Gothic building presents the strongest possible contrast to that
of a Greek building.

In the Greek temple there was no pressure that was