The Gothic architects went even beyond the Romans in this respect. They prided themselves on their constructive skill, and paraded it on all occasions, and often to an extent very destructive of true architectural design. The lower storey of a French cathedral is generally very satisfactory; the walls are thick and solid, and the buttresses, when not choked up with chapels, just sufficient for shadow and relief; but the architects of that country were seized with a mania for clerestories of gigantic height, which should appear internally mere walls of painted glass divided by mullions. This could only be effected either by encumbering the floor of the church with piers of inconvenient thickness or by a system of buttressing outside. The latter was the expedient adopted; but notwithstanding the ingenuity with which it was carried out, and the elegance of many of the forms and ornaments used, it was singularly destructive of true architectural effect. It not only produces confusion of outline and a total want of repose, but it is eminently suggestive of weakness, and one cannot help feeling that if one of these props were removed, the whole would tumble down like a house of cards. This was hardly ever the case in England: the less ambitious dimensions employed in this country enabled the architects to dispense in a great measure with these adjuncts, and when flying buttresses are used, they look more as if employed to suggest the idea of perfect security than as necessary to stability. Owing to this cause the French have never been able to construct a satisfactory vault: in consequence of the weakness of their supports they were forced to stilt, twist, and dome them to a most unpleasing extent, and to attend to constructive instead of artistic necessities. With the English architects this never was the case; they were always able to design their vaults in such forms as they thought would be most beautiful artistically, and, owing to the greater solidity of their supports, to carry them out as at first designed.[12]