They are also panelled on their faces or ornamented with canopied niches containing figures.

It has been remarked that the interiors of buildings of this period, however great their beauty of detail, are entirely wanting in the sublimity and charming gracefulness which characterises those of earlier styles. This defect is also to be noticed in the exteriors, but is there to some extent redeemed by the majestic towers which soar aloft to appearance almost in the sky. These towers abound in Somersetshire, Warwickshire, and Norfolk, although they are very plentiful in other counties. To mention a few: the towers of Gloucester Cathedral, York Minster, the central tower at Canterbury, S. Michael's, Coventry, Titchmarsh in Northamptonshire, and the great tower of Boston Church, Lincolnshire, might each be the pride of a nation.

The towers are usually continued in a square form all the way up, without a spire, and are strengthened by buttresses placed rectangularly on the faces or sides of the tower, which together with the buttresses themselves are often covered with a profusion of panelling and canopied niches. The belfry windows, often ogee-shaped, consist sometimes of a pair placed side by side on each face of the tower, as at Gloucester.

The tops of the towers have parapets, or are battlemented, as at All Saints', Derby, and there are

usually crocketed pinnacles at each corner on the tops of the buttresses, with sometimes a smaller one in the middle of the sides.

There are very few parts of the

parts of the country where

remains of this style are not to be found, the Perpendicular builders being very active and energetic workers. The three counties, however, already named, Warwick, Somerset and Northamptonshire,

with Norfolk, may be said to abound with complete and magnificent examples of their work.

Among the very numerous specimens which. might be named, there are a few which stand first; these are S. Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol, Bath Abbey Church, Beauchamp Chapel, Warwick, Sherborne Abbey, and Manchester Cathedral. The Norman nave of Winchester Cathedral is curiously transformed into the Perpendicular style; parts of the old Norman building still remain, but are redressed as it were in Perpendicular clothing. There is also much Perpendicular work at Canterbury, Gloucester, Bristol (tower), Worcester, and Hereford Cathedrals.

As we have remarked in describing the previous styles, attention must be paid to the peculiarities in the treatment of this style in the various localities in which specimens are found. For instance, the towers of Norfolk and Somersetshire are utterly unlike, and the distinctions between Eastern, Western, and Midland Perpendicular, and again between Early and Late Perpendicular, afford room for much interesting observation on the part of the student.

As a specimen of Late Perpendicular work, none exceed in beauty, even in its present state, the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey,