OF THE DEBASED ENGLISH STYLE.

Q. When did this style commence, and how long did it prevail or continue?

A. It may be said to have commenced about the year 1540, and to have continued to about the middle of the seventeenth century; but it is difficult to assign a precise date either for its introduction or discontinuance.

Q. Why is this style called the Debased?

A. From the general inferiority of design compared with the style it succeeded, from the meagre and clumsy execution of sculptured and other ornamental work, from the intermixture of detail founded on an entirely different school of art, and the consequent subversion of the purity of style.

Q. What may be considered as one great cause of this falling off?

A. The devastation of the monasteries, religious houses, and chantries, which followed their suppression, discouraged the study of ecclesiastical architecture, (which had been much followed by the members of the conventual foundations, who were now dispersed, in their seclusion,) and gave a fatal blow to that spirit of erecting and enriching churches which this country had for many ages possessed.

Q. How could this be the cause?

A. The expenses of erecting many of our ecclesiastical structures, or different portions of them, from time to time, in the most costly and beautiful manner, according to the style of the age in which such were built, were defrayed, some out of the immense revenues of the monasteries, which at their suppression were granted away by the crown, and others by the private munificence of individuals who frequently built an aisle, with a chantry chapel at the east end, partly inclosed by screen-work, or annexed to a church, a transept, or an additional chapel, endowed as a chantry, in order that remembrance might be specially and continually made of them in the offices of the church, according to the then prevailing usage; which chantries having been abolished, one motive for church-building was gone.

Q. What concurrent causes may also be assigned for this change?

A. The almost imperceptible introduction and advance, about this period, of a fantastic mode of architectural design and decoration, which is very apparent in the costly though in many respects inelegant monuments of this age, and in which details of ancient classic architecture were incorporated with others of fanciful design peculiar to the latter part of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries.

Q. What are the characteristics of this style?

A. A general heaviness and inelegance of detail, doorways with pointed-arched heads exceedingly depressed in form, and also plain round-headed doorways, with key stones after the Roman or Italian semi-classic style now beginning to prevail; square-headed windows with plain vertical mullions, and the heads of the lights either round or obtusely arched, and generally without foliations; pointed windows clumsily formed, with plain mullion bars simply intersecting each other in the head, or filled with tracery miserably designed, and an almost total absence of ornamental mouldings. Indications of this style may be found in many country churches which have been repaired or partly rebuilt since the Reformation. In the interior of churches specimens of the wood-work of this style are very common, and may be perceived by the shallow and flat carved panelling, with round arches, arabesques, scroll-work, and other nondescript ornament peculiar to the age, with which the pews, reading-desks, and pulpits are often adorned. The screens of this period are constructed in a semi-classic style of design, with features and details of English growth, and are often surmounted with scroll-work, shields, and other accessories. Of this description of work the screen in the south aisle of Yarnton Church, Oxfordshire, constructed A.D. 1611, may be instanced as a curious specimen.

Q. What peculiarity may be noted in the alterations and additions of this era?

A. A very common practice prevailed, from about the middle of the sixteenth century, when any alteration or addition was made in or to a church, of affixing a stone in the masonry, with the date of such in figures. Thus over the east window of Hillmorton Church, Warwickshire, (which is a pointed window of four lights, formed by three plain mullions curving and intersecting each other in the head, which is filled with nearly lozenge-shaped lights, but all without foliations,) is a stone bearing the date of 1640. In the south wall of the tower of the same church (which is low, heavy, and clumsily built, without any pretension to architectural design) is a stone to denote the period of its erection, which bears the date of 1655. Pulpits, communion-tables, church chests, poor-boxes, and pewing of the latter part of the sixteenth and of the seventeenth century, also very frequently exhibit, in figures carved on them, the precise periods of their construction.

Q. What specimens are there of this style of late or debased and mixed Gothic?

A. Annexed to Sunningwell Church, Berkshire, is a singular porch or building, sexagonal in form, at the angles of which are projecting columns of the Ionic order supporting an entablature. On each side of this building, except that by which it communicates with the church, and that in which the doorway is contained, is a plain window of the Debased Gothic style, of one light, with a square head and hood moulding over. The doorway is nondescript, neither Roman or Gothic. This building is supposed to have been erected by Bishop Jewell. The chapel of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge, finished in 1632, exhibits in the east wall a large pointed window, clumsily designed, in the Debased style, and divided by mullions into five principal lights, round-headed, but trefoiled within; three series of smaller lights, rising one above the other, all of which are round-headed and trefoiled, fill the head of the window, the composition of which, though comparatively rude, is illustrative of the taste of the age. On each side of the window, on the exterior, is a kind of semi-classic niche. In Stowe Church, Northamptonshire, are a number of windows inserted at a general reparation of the church in 1639; these are square-headed, and have a label or hood moulding over, and are mostly divided into three obtusely pointed-arched lights, without foliations. Under the windows of the south aisle is a string-course, more of a semi-classic contour than Gothic. On the south side is a plain round-headed doorway, inserted at the same period. The tower and south aisle of Yarnton Church, Oxfordshire, erected by Sir Thomas Spencer, A.D. 1611, have the same kind of square-headed window, with arched lights without foliations, as those of Stow. Stanton-Harold Church, Leicestershire, erected A.D. 1653, is perhaps the latest complete specimen of the Debased Gothic style. Towards the end of this century Gothic mouldings appear not to have been understood, as in the attempt to reconstruct portions of churches in that style we find mouldings of classic art to prevail. Such is the case with respect to the tower of Eynesbury Church, St. Neot’s, Huntingdonshire, rebuilt in a kind of Debased Gothic and mixed Roman style, in 1687. Other instances of the kind might also be enumerated. At the commencement of the eighteenth century the Roman or Italian mode appears to have prevailed generally in the churches then erected, without any admixture even of the Debased Gothic style.

wonderful thing of all, and, from the standpoint of the America of to-day and of the future, the most vitally important, was the extraordinary way in which Lincoln could fight valiantly against what he deemed wrong and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the brother from whom he differed. In the hour of a triumph that would have turned any weaker man's head, in the heat of a struggle which spurred many a good man to dreadful vindictiveness, he said truthfully that so long as he had been in his office he had never willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom, and besought his supporters to study the incidents of the trial through which they were passing as philosophy from which to learn wisdom and not as wrongs to be avenged; ending with the solemn exhortation that, as the strife was over, all should reunite in a common effort to save their common country.

He lived in days that were great and terrible, when brother fought against brother for what each sincerely deemed to be the right. In a contest so grim the strong men who alone can carry it through are rarely able to do justice to the deep convictions of those with whom they grapple in mortal strife. At such times men see through a glass darkly; to only the rarest and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear vision which gradually comes to all, even the lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds are forgotten, and peace creeps back to the hearts that were hurt.

But to Lincoln was given this supreme vision. He did not hate the man from whom he differed. Weakness was as foreign as wickedness to his strong, gentle nature; but his courage was of a quality so high that it needed no bolstering of dark passion. He saw clearly that the same high qualities, the same courage, and willingness for self-sacrifice, and devotion to the right as it was given them to see the right, belonged both to the men of the North and to the men of the South. As the years roll by, and as all of us, wherever we dwell, grow to feel an equal pride in the valor and self-devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, so this whole nation will grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the man whose blood was shed for the union of his people and for the freedom of a race; the lover of his country and of all mankind; the mightiest of the mighty men who mastered the mighty days, Abraham Lincoln.