[Illustration: FIG. 194.--Cistern in Cast Lead.] An important quality of this kind of treatment is that while the objects are enriched and very expressively decorated their practical efficiency for work is in no way impaired, and this may fairly be taken to be a conclusive test of right decorative treatment. [Illustration: FIG. 195.--Fountain in Cast Lead. Dutch. Seventeenth Century.] Interesting features of Renaissance dwellings were the rainwater heads, cisterns, fountains, statues and other garden accessories that were cast in lead; architectural fashions which are again coming into vogue with the returning regard for the style of the Renaissance. The cistern (Fig. 194) is an heraldic example in cast lead, and Fig. 195 is a fountain in the same material. The latter is Dutch work of the early seventeenth century, and was brought from Bois-le-duc. The motives, eagles displayed, lions’ heads and the lion rampant of Holland which holds in its paws a sword and a sheaf of arrows, are thrice repeated round the central pipe, which is surmounted by a crown. [Illustration: FIG. 196.--Arms of Oxford University. Panel, Copper, silvered and oxidized. G. W. Eve.] Yet another method of metallic production is shown in electro deposited replicas of modelled designs such as Fig. 196, a panel treatment of the Arms of Oxford University, which may be considered in connexion with its fellow of Cambridge, Fig. 89. CHAPTER IX Architectural Decoration In its application to architectural decoration heraldry put forth some of its finest work as became one of the family of the “mother of the arts,” and it was in architecture too that the modern revival of heraldic art began, much in the same way that the Renaissance had first made its influence felt in the decoration of the monuments of an earlier time. The sculptured heraldry of the Middle Ages was confined to the monuments and chantries, such as those of Westminster Abbey, Peterborough, Kings Langley, Canterbury, Beverley and many other places whose sculptured shields are memorials no less of the personages whose arms they bear than of the vigorous art of their time. Certain it is that even in the worst periods the heraldic decoration of architectural objects continued to show a greater degree of excellence than was generally evident in other forms of heraldic expression. With the growth of the Renaissance, domestic architecture and its attendant decoration, in which armorials were displayed, increased enormously in extent and beauty, and the colleges which were founded or rebuilt in the early sixteenth century followed in the decoration of the chapels and halls the excellent examples of their predecessors, but in the new and adaptable style that had come into fashion.