ficient celebrity, which had been previously finished in England.

"The more ancient roofs in those cathedrals where the Norman style prevails, were composed of wood in rafters only; but in the progress of architecture, those were concealed by pannels, and painted in a kind of mosaic of several colours. The surface was even made flat by these means, as in the transept of Peterborough. The naves both of that cathedral and of Ely, afford instances of the ancient timber roof.

"Of the vaulting with stone we have many examples of a date as early as the reign of Henry III. It was formed by groined arches, springing from corbels in the sidewalls between the windows; and when first invented was composed of plain ribs of stone, called cross-springers, with a key-stone in the centre of them, and the interstices were filled up with some lighter materials. There was always a space of several feet intervening between the vaulting and the roof. As the principle of their construction became better known and practised about the reign of Edward III. by the more frequent and complicated intersection of the cross-springers, more ornament was introduced, and delicately carved orbs and rosettes were added, where unnecessary as to any architectural purpose. The arch of the vault was pointed, and that highly embellished part of it did not at first extend many feet on either side the common centre.

"This circumstance is remarkable in the choir at Lincoln, Our Lady's chapel at Ely, and many others erected in the early part of the fourteenth century. In the choir at Gloucester this elaborate work is spread over the whole with equal profusion. To reach a higher degree of excellence, probably because a greater difficulty, the

architects of the latter æra invented an arch, flattened in the centre, and with the groins hemispherically wrought. That particular species of architecture and carving called "fan-work," which, from its extreme cost and delicacy, had been hitherto confined to cloisters, small chapels, and tombs, was now applied to whole roofs, and with an equal defiance of expense and labour, made to supersede all the excellence of construction and finishing that had been previously attainable. It is a fair conjecture, that this new method was either known to few of the mastermasons, or was too expensive for frequent adoption upon a large scale. Certain it is, that the vaults of Windsor, the choir of Winton, Henry VII.'s and King's College chapels, were commenced and completed within twenty years, and that no farther attempts were subsequently made a.

"The tradition, that Sir Christopher Wren declared, "that the construction of King's College chapel was be

a Vaulted roofs constructed in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.

b Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. p. 185. David Loggan impaired his sight by taking the view of this chapel in the Cantab. IlJust. Id. p. 151.