232. Another great difference of a parallel kind exists in the knight's body armour. A Greek never hopes to turn a lance by his cuirass, nor to be invulnerable except by enchantment, in his body-armour, because he will not have it cumbrous enough to impede his movements; but he makes his shield, if possible, strong enough to stop a lance, and carries it as he would a piece of wall: a Gothic knight, on the contrary, endeavoured to make his coat armour invulnerable, and carried the shield merely to ward thrusts on the left side, never large enough to encumber the arm that held the reins. All fine design in Gothic heraldry is founded, therefore, on the form of a short, but pointed shield, convex enough to throw the point of a spear aside easily; a form roughly extending from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century, but of which the most beautiful types are towards the end of the thirteenth. 233. The difference in method of device between the Gothic and classic shields resulted partly from this essential difference in form. The pointed shield, having definitely two sides, like a pointed arch, and a determined position, naturally suggested an arrangement of bearings definitely on one side or the other, or above, or below the centre, while the Greek shield had its boss, or its main bearing, in the centre always, with subordinate decoration round. Farther, the Gothic fineness of colour-instinct seized at once on this division of parts as an opportunity for inlaying or counterchanging colours; and finally, the respect for race, carried out by registry of the remotest branches of noble families, compelled the Gothic heralds of later times to use these methods of dividing or quartering in continually redoubled complexity. 234. Essentially, therefore, as distinguished from the classic shield, the Gothic one is particoloured beneath its definite bearings, or rather, bi-coloured; for the tinctures are never more than two in the main design of them; and the specific methods of arrangement of these two masses of colour have deeper and more ancient heraldic significance than, with few exceptions, their superimposed bearings. I have arranged the twelve principal ones[L] in the 7th of your rudimentary exercises, and they will be entirely fixed in your minds by once drawing it. [L] Charges which "doe peculiarly belong to this art, and are of ordinary use therein, in regard whereof they are called 'ordinaries.'"--See GUILLIM, sect. ii. chap. iii. (Ed. 1638.) "They have also the title of honourable ordinaries in that the court armour is much honoured thereby." The French call them "pièces honorables." 235. Observe respecting them. 1. The Chiefe; a bar of colour across the upper part of the shield, signifies authority or chief-dom, as the source of all order, power, and peace.