The ornaments of German Gothic are often profuse, but rarely quite happy. Sculpture, often of a high class, carving of every sort, tracery, and panelling, are largely employed; but with a hardness and a tendency to cover all surfaces with a profusion of weak imitations of tracery that disfigures much of the masonry. The tracery became towards the latter part of the time intricate and unmeaning, and the interpenetrating mouldings already described, though of course intended to be ornamental, are more perplexing and confusing than pleasing: the carving exaggerates the natural markings of the foliage represented, and being thin, and very boldly undercut, resembles leaves beaten out in metal, rather than foliage happily and easily imitated in stone, which is what good architectural carving should be. The use of coloured building materials and of inlays and mosaics does not prevail to any great extent in Germany, though stained glass is often to be found and coloured wall decoration occasionally. [Illustration: FIG. 49.--ST. SEBALD'S CHURCH AT NUREMBERG. THE BRIDE'S DOORWAY. (1303-1377.)] _Construction and Design._ The marked peculiarities of construction by which the German Gothic buildings are most distinguished, are the prevalent high-pitched roofs, the vaulting with aisle vaults carried to the same height as in the centre, and the employment in certain districts of brick to the exclusion of stone, all of which have been already referred to. In a great part of that large portion of Europe, which is included under the name of Germany, the materials and modes of construction adopted during the middle ages, bear a close resemblance to those in general use in France and England. Some of the characteristics of German Gothic design have been already alluded to. The German architects display an exuberant fancy, a great love of the picturesque, and even the grotesque, and a strong predilection for creating artificial difficulties in order to enjoy the pleasure of surmounting them. Their work is full of unrest; they attach small value to the artistic quality of breadth, and destroy the value of the plain surfaces of their buildings as contrasts to the openings, by cutting them up by mouldings and enrichments of various sorts. The sculpture introduced is, as a rule, naturalistic rather than conventional. The capitals of piers and columns are often fine specimens of effective carving, while the delicate and ornamental details of the tabernacle work with which church furniture is enriched, are unsurpassed in elaboration, and often of rare beauty. The churches of Nuremberg are specially distinguished for the richness and number of their sculptured fittings. There is, moreover, in some of the best German buildings a rugged grandeur which approaches the sublime; and in the humbler ones a large amount of picturesque and thoroughly successful architecture.