in this great
facade two similar flanking towers but spires entirely unlike. What
happened at Chartres happened elsewhere. The original design of
buildings was in the main symmetrical, but it was never considered
that symmetry was a matter so important as to require that much
sacrifice should be made to preserve it.

On the other hand the subordination of a multitude of small features
to one dominant one enters largely into the design of every good
Gothic building; with the result that if the great governing feature
or mass has been carried out in its entirety, almost any feature, no
matter how irregular or unsymmetrical, may be safely introduced, and
will only add picturesqueness and piquancy to the design. This is more
or less a leading principle of Gothic design. A building with no
irregularities, none of those charming additions which add individual
character to Gothic churches, and none of the isolated features which
the principle of subordination permits the architect to employ, has
missed one of the chief qualities of the style. It is here that
unskilled architects mostly fail when they attempt Gothic designs;
they either hold on to symmetry as though they were designing a Greek
temple, and they are unaware that the spirit of the style in which
they are trying to work not only permits, but requires some irregular
features; or if they do not fall into this error they are overtaken by
the opposite one, and omit to make their irregular features
subordinate to the general effect of the whole, an error less serious
in its effects than the other, but still destructive of anything like
the highest qualities in a building.

Repetition, like symmetry, is recognised by Gothic architecture, but
not adhered to in a rigid way. No buildings gain more from the
repetition of parts than Gothic churches and cathedrals; the series of
pillars or piers and arches inside, the series of buttresses and
windows outside, add scale to the general effect. But so long as it
was in the main a series of features which broadly resembled one
another, the Gothic architect was satisfied, and did not feel bound to
exact repetition.

We are often, for example, surprised to find in the columns of a
church an octagonal one alternating with a circular one, and almost
invariably, if a series of capitals be examined, each will be
discovered to differ from the others to some extent. In one bay of a
church there may be a two-light window, and in the n