Waterhouse, Percy Leslie: The story of architecture throughout the ages: an introduction to the study of the oldest of the arts for students and general readers (London: B. T. Batsford, 1924)

150 THE STORY OF ARCHITECTURE

reduce the span, or width of the vaulted spaces.
The Romanesque builders worked out a
system of construction with preliminary arches
or ribs, and it was in the efforts of the later
architects to find a solution to the roof diffi-
culties, and in their gradual recognition of the
aesthetic possibilities of the rib, that they
developed the great principle of ribbed vaulting


Fig. 55.—Gothic Ribbed Vaulting.
—a principle which brought about nothing less
than a revolution in the art of building, and
which, in fact, formed the structural basis of
the style of architecture known as “ Gothic.”
This new principle at once infused into
architecture the new quality of energy, as
distinguished from that strength in repose,
which characterised the Romanesque.
The term Gothic is as unfortunate as it is
inapt. Gothic architecture is the natural out-
come of Romanesque, though the term seems
to suggest a break in the progressive character
of the art, and has doubtless proved a stumbling
block to many students, by leading them to
regard the styles as distinct from, and possibly
opposed to, one another. “ Gothic ” was
merely a contemptuous term applied to the