ut we may here note
that the reredos, so universally found in our cathedrals, abbeys, and
in many of our churches, forms no part of the altar, and the Court of
Arches has decided that there are no altars in the Church of England,
but only communion tables.

Prominent among the external enrichments of our churches is the
gargoyle, a word derived from the French, "gargouille," which in its
turn comes from the Latin "gurgulio"--a water-spout. The earliest
gargoyles are merely orifices with a lip to shoot the water well away
from the fabric. The true gargoyle, however, was quickly evolved from
this primitive form, and consists of two parts, the lower one forming
the channel, the upper one being the cover. The full significance of the
skill displayed by the old masons in the rare opportunity the gargoyle
afforded them of representing the dragons, serpents, etc., in which
their fancy revelled, is made apparent when we view the futile attempts
of modern architects to introduce this feature in their churches, for
modern gargoyles are generally grotesque caricatures, and anything but
happy appendages to the buildings to which they are attached.

[Illustration: Examples of Buttresses.
_Norman_ _Decorated_
_Flying Buttress_
_Early English_ _Perpendicular_
_Drawn by E. M. Heath._]

The churchyard, so pleasing an adjunct to the House of God placed within
it, is frequently approached through a lych-gate, which word is derived
from the Saxon _lich_, a corpse. These gates in our country churchyards
are often very picturesque little structures, and under them the corpse
at a funeral awaited the officiating priest before being taken into the
church. The churchyard is commonly regarded as a mere dependency of the
church, and as having a history very inferior in interest to that of the
temple to which it is the court. The truth is that many of our churchyards
have an antiquity far greater than that of the churches, as many of them
constituted the open-air meeting-places of our Saxon forefathers long
before the erection of parish churches. In the common meeting-place a
cross was set up, either of wood or stone, to mark and hallow the spot,
and when a church was subsequently built it was usually in the immediate
vicinity of the cross, which accounts for the fact that many churchyard
crosses are of older date than the churches themselves.

Wells of water are often found in old churchyards, and as the
regulat