is of four lights, and the sub-arches rise from the centre mullion, while in Merton, which is of three lights, the mullions are

carried up to the architrave, and the side lights only are sub-arcuated. Both these forms are very frequent. In many later examples these sub-arches are entirely disused, and all the mullions are carried through the transom; this is the case at New College, but it was afterwards used to excess, so as much to injure the

effect of the windows. In the later examples the arches of the windows are much lower than they were in the earlier period, and the four-centred arch, which began now to be extensively used, was gradually

depressed, until all beauty of proportion was lost, the arches being little more than two straight lines rounded at the angle of junction with the jambs. These late windows had frequently great width in proportion to their height, and were placed SO near together that the strength of the building entirely depended on the buttress

es. These windows hay

ing all been originally filled with painted glass, we have rarely

an opportunity of judging of the proper effect of them, the glare of light which we now complain of having been caused by the destruction of that material, which was intended to soften and partially to exclude it. The church of Fairford, in Gloucestershire, affords a rare instance of the painted glass having been preserved in all the windows, and the effect is solemn and calm, very far from glaring. The clerestories also are frequently almost a sheet of glass, merely divided by lighter or heavier mullions, thus offering a complete contrast to the small and distant openings so frequently found in Early English and Decorated work. Squareheaded, segmental, and other flat-arched windows, are frequent in this style. In rich churches there is sometimes a double plane of tracery, the one glazed, the other not: in the choir of York the inner one is glazed: the east window of the nave of Chipping-Norton church, Oxfordshire, over the chancel-arch, is a fine specimen of this kind of window; in that instance the outer plane is glazed.

THE DOORWAYS are frequently very rich, but have generally one prevailing form, which is a depressed arch within a square frame, and over this a label.

ornamented with shafts, and the spandrels filled with shields and foliage.

THE PORCHES are in general very fine, and highly enriched with panel-work, buttresses, and pinnacles, and open parapets, windows, and tabernacles with figures, flanking the window or the outer arch, and in the interior a richly groined vault. Very fine examples of these porches are found in Norfolk, Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Dorsetshire.

THE BUTTRESSES are frequently panelled, they are not pedimented, but their set-offs are finished with a plain slope, and they are frequently termi

Divinity School, Oxford, c. 1490.