AND AFTER-GOTHIC STYLES IN GERMANY. 231 most curious alteruations. A nd this notion of interpenetra- ting forms Avas applied to many of the elements of a building. The mouldings in the heads of doors, windows, piers, &c., which meet to form a pointed arch, do not stop when they meet, but cross each other till they are lost in the more pro- jecting parts. The same is the case with other mouldings which meet each other at an angle in any way ; they do not stop, but cross each other, and die in the projecting masses. In the same way we have clusters of shafts, some of which having their square pedestals set diagonally, and their mouldings at a different height from the others, the mould- ings of the pedestals and of the bases of the shafts appear as alternate projections. This is frequent in English After- Gothic (Perpendicular). As another case of interpenetra- tion, we may refer to the examples in which the German architects carried two tracery bars each through the other, and then cut them off short beyond the intersection, making what has been called stiimp-tracery . At Strasburg, in the upper part of the cathedral tower, which is of After-Gothic work, the mouldings of the window heads are treated in another way. There are three or four roll mouldings in the window sides which meet in the head, but not exactly ; each roll on the one side falling into the hollow between two rolls on the other, like the fingers of two clasped hands. In all these cases of interpenetration it is evident that a play of the fancy, curiously tracing the consequences of cer- tain geometrical assumptions, prescribes the forms, not the organic connexion which appears in the true Gothic work. It is remarkable, however, that the practice of inter- penetration which was, in the After-Gothic of Germany, pursued so extensively and laboriously as to be a leading- characteristic of the decline of Gothic architecture, did not make its appearance then for the first time. Wc find the interpenetration of mouldings both in early German and in early English work ; for instance, in the heads of piscinas. M. Kallenbach says that in Germany such intersecting mouldings occurred early, but vanished in 1250 and re-ap- peared in 1450, and then became in many cases the pre- dominating ornament. In the period of the formation of Gothic architecture, many elements of ornamentation, arbi- trarily invented, or suggested from various quarters, come into view. Some of these were persistent in their influence ;
