EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR COMPARTMENTS.
The most perfect type of a church built in England, during the best
ages of Church Architecture, may be said to contain the following
essentials:--
1. The Ground Plan is after the form of the Latin Cross, and
is divisible _longitudinally_ into three portions; namely,
THE CHOIR,
THE TRANSEPTS,
THE NAVE.
2. The Choir and the Nave, and occasionally the Transepts,
are divided, by means of columns and arches, _transversely_
into three portions, consisting of the
CENTRE AISLE,
NORTH AISLE,
SOUTH AISLE.
3. The MAIN WALL of each of the first-mentioned separate
portions of the building is divisible, in the interior
_vertically_ into three portions, or Stories, consisting of
THE GROUND-STORY,
THE TRIFORIUM OR BLIND-STORY,
THE CLERE-STORY.
Now on viewing any of these Main Walls of a building, whether on the
inside, or the outside, it will be at once seen that they consist, in
their entire length, of a series of single and separate portions, or
_Compartments_, tied together, and connected by the horizontal lines,
or String courses, which traverse them from end to end; and that each
of these single Compartments embodies within itself the spirit of the
whole design, and may be said to represent, individually, the MAIN IDEA
of the Building.
It is this portion of such a building then--a single Compartment of the
Exterior and Interior of the Main Walls of the Choir or Nave, and its
adjacent Aisle--that we have selected for the purpose of instituting
that comparison which will enable us to fix and define the
characteristics of the Seven Periods of English Architecture.
Neglecting, therefore, for the present, the Gable Ends, the Towers and
Turrets, the Porches, the Doorways, the Chapels, the Cloisters, and all
the other adjuncts of an Ecclesiastical Building, and bestowing our
entire attention upon these Exterior and Interior Compartments, we will
proceed at once to a comparison of their several parts, and consider in
order the mode of treatment they received at the hands of the builders,
of each of these Seven Periods, commencing with the earliest and
descending to the latest.