Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/231

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
Bk. VI. Ch. IV.
215

Bk. VI. Ch. IV. MELROSE ABBEY. 215 solid style of architecture, with a vault of considerable richness. The window of the south transept is the most elegant specimen of flowing tracery to be found in Scotland, and its great east window (Woodcdt No. 648), as before remarked, is almost the only example of the perpendicular style in the North, and is equal to anything of the kind on this side of the Tweed. c » 647. Aisle in Melrose Abbey. Few of the architectural antiquities of Scotland are so well known, or have been so much admired, as the chapel at Roslyn (Woodcut No. 649), which William St. Clair caused to be erected in the year 1446. For this purpose he did not employ his countrymen, but " brought artificers from other regions and forraigne kingdomes," ^ and employed them to erect a building very unlike anything else to be found in Great Britain. Our present knowledge of styles enables us to pronounce with little doubt that his architects came from the Spanish peninsula. In fact, 1 Britton's " Architectural Antiquities," vol. xiv. p. 81.