in the Concluding Chapter; and the whole has been
considerably enlarged.

M. H. B.

Rugby,
April 1841.

CONTENTS.

Page
CHAP. I.
Definition of Gothic Architecture; its Origin, and Division
of it into Styles 17

CHAP. II.
Of the different Kinds of Arches 22

CHAP. III.
Of the Anglo-Saxon Style 30

CHAP. IV.
Of the Norman or Anglo-Norman Style 51

CHAP. V.
Of the Semi-Norman Style 74

CHAP. VI.
Of the Early English Style 86

CHAP. VII.
Of the Decorated English Style 102

CHAP. VIII.
Of the Florid or Perpendicular English Style 120

CHAP. IX.
Of the Debased English Style 145

CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
Of the Internal Arrangement and Decorations of a Church 153

CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS.

Page 41, line 9, _for_ Cambridge, _read_ Lincoln.

Page 49. In addition to the list of churches containing presumed vestiges
of Anglo-Saxon architecture, Woodstone Church, Huntingdonshire, and
Miserden Church, Gloucestershire, may be enumerated.

Page 71. The double ogee moulding is here inserted by mistake: it is not
Norman, but of the fifteenth century.

Page 137. In some copies the wood-cut in this page has been reversed in
its position.

[Illustration: Two Arches of Roman Masonry, Leicester.]

INTRODUCTION.

ON THE ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND DECLINE OF GOTHIC OR ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL
ARCHITECTURE.

Amongst the vestiges of antiquity which abound in this country, are the
visible memorials of those nations which have succeeded one another in the
occupancy of this island. To the age of our Celtic ancestors, the earliest
possessors of its soil, is ascribed the erection of those altars and
temples of all but primeval antiquity, the Cromlechs and Stone Circles
which lie scattered over the land; and these are conceived to have been
derived from the Phoenicians, whose merchants first introduced amongst
the aboriginal Britons the arts of incipient civilization. Of these most
ancient relics the prototypes appear, as described in Holy Writ, in the
pillar raised at Bethel by Jacob, in the altars erected by the Patriarchs,