CASTLES  OF THE  I3TH CENTURY

34,     HARLECH CASTLE, CHIEFLY 1286-90,
55
ment, crispness and noblesse in every individual motif as the French
style of the great cathedrals. It is in fact this essential similarity of
detail that reminds one all the time of the ultimate identity of spirit
behind French and English 13th-century architecture. To feel this,
it is only necessary to look at the central pier at Salisbury or the piers
of the nave arcade in Lincoln with their slender detached shafts and
their resilient crocket capitals (of a type equally characteristic of c.
1200 in England and France, cf. fig. 20), or at the clarity and erect-
ness of the English lancet window (English in that it presupposes a
solid wall into which it is placed as against the French elimination of
the whole wall), or at the masterful carving of the leaves around the
capitals of Southwell Chapter-house (pi. xxxiv) throbbing with life,
yet kept under the strict discipline of architecture, economic in
treatment, nowhere fussy or ostentatious and of a precision of sur-
face only to be compared with the classic Greek art of the Parthenon.
But the Classic is only a moment in the history of a civilisation.
The most progressive had reached it in France and England at the
end of the I2th century. The most progressive were tired of it and
embarked on new adventures shortly after the middle of the isth.
In France, however, the magnificent creative impulse soon flagged
—after the Sainte Chapelle in Paris and the gigantic choir of
Beauvais there was nothing for a long time with such intensity of
life. England on the other hand kept up her creative energy for
another century. In fact, the architecture of England between 1250
and 1350 was, although the English do not know it, the most for-
ward, the most important and the most inspired in Europe.