Fergusson, James: The illustrated handbook of architecture: being a concise and popular account of the different styles of architecture preveiling in all ages and all countries (London, 1859)

Chav. I.

PROVENCE.

609

of Cruas (woodcut No. 482), wliere these parts are pleasingly subordi-
nated, and form, with the apses on which they rest, a very heautiful
composition. The defect is the tiled roofs or offsets at the junction
of the various stories, which give an appearance of weakness, as if the
upper parts could slide, like the joints of a telescope, one into the other.

482. Church at Cruas. From Taylor and Kodier.

This could easily he avoided, and prohahly was so in the original
design. If this were done, we have here the principle of a more
pleasing crowning memher at an intersection than was afterwards used
in pointed arcliitecture, and capahle of heing applied to domes of any
extent.

Cloisters.

Nearly all, and certainly all the more important churches of which
we have heen speaking, were collegiate, and with such the cloister
was as important a part of the estahlishment as the church itself,
and frequently the more heautiful ohject of the two. In our own
cold wet climate the cloisters lose much of their appropriateness;
still they always are used, and always with a pleasing effect; hut in
the warm sunny South their charm is increased tenfold. The artists
seem to have felt this, and to have devoted a large share of their
attention to these objects—creating in fact a new style of architecture
for this special purpose.

With us the arcades of a cloister are generally, if not always, a
range of unglazed windows, presenting the same features as those of
the church, which, though heautiful when filled with glass, are some-
what out of place without that indispensahle adjunct. In the South

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