St. Mary Magdalen, Oxford.]

Q. How may the buttresses of this style be distinguished?

[Illustration: Flying Buttress, Salisbury Cathedral.]

A. They were worked in stages, and their set-offs have frequently
triangular heads, sometimes plain but often ornamented with crockets and
finials of a more decorative character than those of the Early English
style. Many buttresses have, however, plain slopes as set-offs, and they
are frequently placed diagonally at the corners of buildings, as at
Dunchurch Church, Warwickshire. The flying buttresses at Salisbury
Cathedral, in which the thrust is partly counterpoised by
pyramidal-headed pinnacles decorated with crockets and finials, are of
this age.

Q. What parapet is peculiar to this style?

A. Besides the plain embattled parapet, which is not always easy to be
distinguished from other styles, a horizontal blocking course, pierced
with foliated or wavy, flowing tracery, which has a rich effect, is
common. Of this description specimens occur at St. Mary Magdalen Church,
Oxford, and Brailes Church, Warwickshire.

Q. What is observable in the niches of this style?

A. They are very beautiful, and are generally surmounted by triangular or
ogee-shaped canopies, enriched with crockets and finials, while the
interior of the canopies are groined with numerous small rib mouldings.
The crockets and finials of this style, as decorative embellishments, are
peculiarly graceful, chaste, and pleasing in contour.

Q. Was the transition from this style to the next gradual?

A. Both the transition from the Early English to the Decorated style, and
from the Decorated to the Florid or Perpendicular, was so gradual, that
though many individual details and ornaments were extremely dissimilar,
and peculiar to each particular style, we are only able to judge from
examples when a change was generally established.

Q. From what cotemporary writers of the fourteenth century can we collect
any architectural notices, either general or of detail?

[Illustration: Part of the Altar Screen, Winchester Cathedral.]

A. In Chaucer we find allusions made to _imageries_, _pinnacles_,
_tabernacles_, (canopied niches for statuary,) and _corbelles_. Lydgate,
in _The Siege of Troy_, in his description of the buildings, adverts to
those of his own age, and uses several architectural terms now obsolete or
little understood, and some which are not so, as _gargoiles_. In Pierce
Ploughman's Creed we have a con