often resembling a

wreath of flowers

twisted round the

top of the pillar (152); and this may probably have been the idea of the sculptors, as the custom of decorating churches with flowers at certain seasons is a very ancient one: it is probable also that the sculpture was originally co

loured after nature.

Rev. W. Grey.

152. Stoke-in-Teignhead, Devonshire, c. 1480

There is comparatively a squareness about the Perpendicular foliage which takes from the freshness and beauty which distinguish that of the Decorated style. Indeed, the use of square and angular forms is one of the characteristics of the style; we have square panels, square foliage, square crockets (153) and finials, square forms in the windows, caused by the introduction of so

many transoms,-and an approach 153. Solihull, Warwickshire

to squareness in the depressed and

low pitch of the roofs, in late examples.

Square crocket.

The splendid OPEN TIMBER ROOFS (154), which are

154. St. Michael's, Coventry, c. 1500.

Shewing a panelled inner roof, or ceiling, with arched tie-beams

the glory of the eastern counties, belong almost entirely to this style; the screens and lofts across the chancelarch, often across the aisles and the tower-arch also a, and the richly carved bench-ends for which the West

• In Norfolk there are several fine examples remaining of galleries and screens, commonly called rood-lofts, being used at the west end of the church also, under the tower and across the tower-arch; and this in churches where the rood-loft, properly so called, still remains across the chancel-arch, so that there is a quasi-roodloft at each end of the nave. There is no doubt that this custom prevailed in many other counties also, but the western loft has generally been destroyed in consequence of the barbarous custom of blocking up the tower-arch, which is often the finest feature in the church.

of England is so justly celebrated, also belong to it; in fact, nearly the whole of the medieval wood-work which we have remaining is of this style, and this material appears to be peculiarly adapted for it. It may reasonably be doubted whether the modern attempts to revive the wood-work of the Norman and Early English styles are not altogether a mistake. Nothing can well exceed the richness and beauty of the Perpendicular wood-work, and it is easy to imagine that a church of the twelfth or thirteenth century has been newly furnished in the fifteenth or sixteenth. We have, however, some very beautiful examples of Decorated wood-work in screens, and stalls with their canopies, as at Winchester; there are also a few wooden tombs of that period.

The Redcliffe Church, Bristol, the west front and south porch of Gloucester Cathedral, and part of the choir of St. Alban's Abbey Church, with the tomb of Abbot Wheathamstead, are also of this period, and good specimens of the style. Within the next twenty years we have a crowd of examples, which it is not necessary to enumerate.

But a few more specimens of the later period of this style can hardly be passed over, such as St. George's Chapel, Windsor, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster; and of the very latest before the change of style, Bath Abbey Church, the Savoy Chapel, in the Strand, London, with its very beautiful panelled ceiling, and Whiston Church, Northants.

Castles and houses of this style are numerous, and many of them very fine; the fortifications gradually disappear, or are used more for show than for use. These English buildings of the Perpendicular style have a bold and grand character of their own, quite distinct from any foreign style; the French chateaux of the same period are often very pretty and elegant buildings, but they belong to quite a different class, and can hardly be compared to the English gentleman's mansion or nobleman's palace of the time of Richard II., and those even of the Tudor era need not fear the comparison. No one can look at such buildings as Penshurst, Hurstmonceaux,

Chalfield, Cowdray, or Thornbury, without acknowledging that there is much to admire in them. It is too much the fashion at present to run down the Perpendicular style because it is exclusively English, and the dilettanti of the day can admire nothing but what is Venetian, or at least foreign; they wilfully shut their eyes to the merits of the works of our own ancestors.

THE RENAISSANCE.

AFTER the time of Henry the Seventh the style loses its purity; indeed, at that time we find Italian features introduced, though sparingly, among the true Gothic, and these become more numerous in the reign of his successor. In foreign countries the classical styles were revived at an earlier period than with us. The French call it the style of the "Renaissance." Elizabethan style is a singular mixture of Gothic and Italian details; it is almost confined to domestic buildings, but may occasionally be found in additions and alterations of churches, as at Sunningwell, Berkshire.

The

In the time of James the First a strenuous effort was made to revive the Gothic style, more especially in Oxford, and although the details are poor and clumsy imitations, the general effect is frequently very good.

The

Of this period the Schools are a good example, especially the vaulted room called the " "Pig Market." Lincoln College Chapel is also a very favourable specimen of Jacobean Gothic, as it is often called. choir of Wadham College Chapel is another very remarkable example, the design and details of which are so good that it would appear incredible that it could be of this period, but for the fact that the weekly account kept by the clerk of the works for the foundress is preserved among the records of the college, and leaves no room for doubt on the subject. It is still more extraordinary that the windows of the hall and ante-chapel were erected at the same time, week by week, by another gang of men: the inferiority of taste displayed in them would make them appear at least fifty years later.