HE EMPIRE STYLE BY PERCIER AND FONTAINE.
FRIEZE FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. (ROMAN); ROMAN DORIC
FRIEZE--VIGNOLE]

[Illustration 16]

[Illustration 17]

The vital, organic quality so conspicuous in the best Gothic
architecture has been attributed to the fact that necessity determined
its characteristic forms. Professor Goodyear has demonstrated that
it may be due also in part to certain subtle vertical leans and
horizontal bends; and to nicely calculated variations from strict
uniformity, which find their analogue in nature, where structure is
seldom rigidly geometrical. The author hazards the theory that still
another reason why a Gothic cathedral seems so living a thing is
because it abounds in contrasts between what, for lack of more
descriptive adjectives, he is forced to call masculine and feminine
forms.

[Illustration 18]

[Illustration 19]

Ruskin says, in _Stones of Venice_, "All good Gothic is nothing more
than the development, in various ways, and on every conceivable scale,
of the group formed by the pointed arch for the bearing line below,
and the gable for the protecting line above, and from the huge, gray,
shaly slope of the cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults
beneath, to the crown-like points that enrich the smallest niche of
its doorway, one law and one expression will be found in all. The
modes of support and of decoration are infinitely various, but the
real character of the building, in all good Gothic, depends on the
single lines of the gable over the pointed arch endlessly rearranged
and repeated." These two, an angular and a curved form, like the
everywhere recurring column and lintel of classic architecture,
are but presentments of Yo and In (Illustration 18). Every Gothic
traceried window, with straight and vertical mullions in the
rectangle, losing themselves in the intricate foliations of the arch,
celebrates the marriage of this ever diverse pair. The circle and the
triangle are the In and Yo of Gothic tracery, its Eve and Adam, as
it were, for from their union springs that progeny of trefoil,
quatrefoil, cinquefoil, of shapes flowing like water, and shapes
darting like flame, which makes such visible music to the entranced
ear.

[Illustration 20: SAN GIMIGNANO S. JACOPO.]

By seeking to discover In and Yo in their myriad manifestations, by
learning to discriminate between them, and by attempting to express
their characteristic qualities in new forms of beauty