f a church spire are slightly curved,
so that they swell out a little in the centre. This is called the
entasis of the spire, and belongs to the study of optics in architecture.
Where the spire has no entasis the same effect is produced by the
introduction of small projecting gables, bands of carving, or a little
coronal of pinnacles.

One of the most clearly marked differences between English and continental
spires is that the latter are much shorter than the towers which support
them, the towers, as a rule, being twice as high as the spires. In
England, on the contrary, the spire is generally very much loftier
than the tower. At Shottesbrook, Berks, and Ledbury, Herefordshire, the
spires occupy as much as three-fifths of the total elevation, and the
usual rule in England is for the tower to be a little less in height
than the spire.

The masons lavished an extraordinary amount of care and skill on their
spires. So much is this the case that there is hardly a mediaeval spire
in the country which can be called ill-designed or displeasing.

Church spires are very common in some counties and very rare in others.
There are, of course, exceptions, but it is in the flat counties that
spires are most frequent, the most beautiful ones being found in
Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire,
Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

The top of the spire is usually capped with a weather vane terminating
in a cock. The custom of using a cock as the flag of the vane is of very
early date, for Wolfstan, in his Life of S. Ethelwold, written towards
the end of the 10th century, speaks of one which surmounted Winchester
Cathedral. In the Bayeux Tapestry one is shown on the gable of Westminster
Abbey, and one of the early Popes ordained that every church under the
papal jurisdiction should be surmounted by a cock as emblematical of the
sovereignty of the church over the whole world.

CHAPTER XI.

STAINED GLASS.

The use of coloured glass in the windows of buildings devoted to
religious purposes appears to have been employed as early as the ninth
century, but no examples remain of anything like so old a date, and we
have only illuminated missals and primitive drawings by members of the
conventual bodies to guide us in determining the earliest styles of
coloured glazing. It appears to have consisted of more or less primitive
representations of the human form, with strong black lines to indicate