but as tracery usually belongs to the Decorated style, its progress will be traced under that head.

Having now completed the outline of the history of the principal known buildings of the Early English style, it remains only to describe the characteristic features.

EARLY ENGLISH BUILDINGS are readily distinguished from those of the Norman period by their comparative lightness, their long narrow pointed windows, their boldly projecting buttresses and pinnacles, and the acute pitch of the roof. Internally we have pointed arches supported on slender and lofty pillars, which are frequently formed of a number of shafts connected at intervals by bands. One of these shafts is frequently carried up to the springing of the roof, where it ramifies in various directions to form the ribs of the vaulting, which have now lost the heaviness of the Norman period and are become light and elegant. The whole character of the building is changed, and instead of the

heavy masses and horizontal lines of the Norman style, we have light and graceful forms and vertical lines.

The rapidity with which the change of style took place has been pointed out, and the complete character of the change, which was developed as fully in some of the earliest buildings of the new style as in the latest. New ideas and a new life seem to have been given to architecture, and the builders appear to have revelled in it even to exuberance and excess, and it was necessary afterwards in some degree to soften down and subdue it. At no period has "the principle of verticality" been so far carried out as in the Early English style, and even in some of the earliest examples of it. Probably the fall of St. Hugh's tower at Lincoln, and some other similar occurrences, taught the necessity of greater caution.

One of the chief characteristics of the Early English style consists in the MOULDINGS, which differ essentially from those of the Norman, for

while those consisted chiefly of squares with round mouldings in the angles, or with the angles chamfered off, in the Early English they are chiefly

bold rounds, with equally bold and deeply cut hollows, which produce a strong effect of light and shade. In many

of the earlier examples the square

Temple Church, London, A.D 1240.

the style advanced this squareness is lost, and the mouldings appear to be cut on a chamfer, or sloping surface, and none of the plain square masonry remains, the whole being worked up into rich suites of mouldings, separated only by deep hollows. In the later examples a peculiar moulding called the roll, or scroll moulding, is used, but this was still more used in the succeeding or Decorated style, and is often called one of the marks of that style. The fillet was now profusely used on the rounds, one, two, or sometimes three fillets being cut on a single

I

moulding, thus giving a very different though still beautiful character to them, but this always shews a tendency to transition to the next style.

Throughout the Early English period there is an ornament used in the hollow mouldings, which is as characteristic of this style as the zig-zag is of the Norman, this consists of a small pyramid more or less acute, cut into four leaves or petals meeting in the point but separate below. When very acute and seen in profile it may be imagined to have somewhat the appearance of a row of teeth, and from this it has been called the dog-tooth orna