[Illustration: Fig. 108.--St. Alban’s Cathedral. Ornament between Shafts, Western Portals.] The north porches of Salisbury and Wells are very noble; indeed, many of our great churches have portals which we should deem magnificent, could we forget those of France, and which we know to be eminently beautiful, however they may be surpassed in magnificence. In almost all other parts the English cathedrals of this age are often richer than the French, as in the clustering of the columns, the richness of the arch mouldings, the beauty of their wall arcading, the importance and detail of the triforium, etc.; while, on the contra side, they have to yield greatly to the French in altitude, and in many cases in general scale, as well as in the amount of sculpture with which they are enriched. My object in drawing these comparisons is not a wish to lay any claim to superiority for either, nor to shake the claims of our neighbours to general precedence, as I view Paris to have been, in a certain sense, the centre and metropolis of Mediæval art. It is rather to show that these were the arts of a great _period_, not of a single _people_; that all were labouring together in perfecting a great and glorious development of art, each knowing well what others were doing, each according to their means taking care to keep up to the standard already attained, and to add to the public treasury developments of their own; each making it his great endeavour to do his own work as well as it could possibly be done according to the means at command, and each people vying with its neighbours, not in the spirit of petty jealous competitors for praise, but each striving, with a noble and glorious emulation, to do the utmost in its power to further the great art which all had contributed in generating. Having given, in this and my two preceding lectures, a rough and very imperfect sketch of the rise and perfecting of Gothic architecture, it is not my intention any further to pursue the subject historically; but--assuming the thirteenth century to be the great period of the style--I should wish, in any future lectures I may give, to illustrate and discuss its principles, and the many sections into which it divides itself, whether geographical varieties or the leading features of the buildings themselves. I may not be able to carry out this intention, but in my next lecture, the last of the present session, I purpose--after alluding to some of the most remarkable works of the period and with some slight description of their characteristics, and after calling attention to the all-pervading character of the art as it bore upon secular and other buildings, upon the allied arts, and upon the ordinary arts of common life--to found upon what we have had in review before us some general suggestions as to the practical lessons we ought to learn from what we have been considering, and the influence it ought to have upon our own artistic practice. LECTURE V.