gon,
etc.

[Illustration: A Late Decorated Window in a Parish Church.
East Sutton, Kent. _Photograph Gardner Waterman._]

In Curvilinear windows the tracery, although based on the same forms and
figures, is yet so blended into an intricate pattern that each figure
does not stand out with the same individuality as in the Geometric.
Among our most beautiful Geometric windows are those of the Lady Chapel
at Exeter, Ely Chapel, and Merton Chapel, Oxford, and of the Curvilinear
our best example is probably the east window of Carlisle Cathedral.

It must be noted that beautiful as are Curvilinear windows, yet they
mark a certain decadence in Gothic architecture, in that it is an
irrational treatment of stone, and conveys the idea that the material
was bent and not cut into the required shape, it being a well-established
canon in art that when strength is sacrificed to mere elegance it marks
a decline in that art.

[Side note: Decorated Capitals and Piers.]

Decorated capitals as a rule follow the contour of the pier in clustered
columns, and are either bell-shaped or octagonal. They are frequently
only moulded, thus presenting rounds, ogees and hollows, on which the
prevailing ornaments of the period, the ball and the square flower,
are set. The foliated sculpture is most exquisite, and is gracefully
wreathed around the bell, instead of rising from the astrigal or upper
member of the capital, as in the earlier style.

[Illustration: Examples of Decorated Ornament.
Finial Capital Finial
(Wimborne Minster). (York Minster). (York Minster).
Square Flower.
Ball Flower.
Crocket Cornice Crockets
(Hereford Cathedral). (Grantham). (York Minster).
_Drawn by E. M. Heath._]

Almost every variety of leaf and flower is represented, the oak, the
vine and the rose being perhaps the most common, but the leaves of the
maple, hazel, ivy and strawberry are all so beautifully rendered as to
evidence their having been directly studied from nature. Plucked flowers
too, are not uncommon, and sometimes the little stalks and foliage
are accompanied by birds, lizards, squirrels and other creatures. The
columns of this period are much more elaborate than those of the Early
English style, and in plan have curved profiles with moulded members
between the shafts. These mouldings are very varied, but the hollows not
being s