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little not being new, he said, that clubs like the one he was addressing 

 ought to be a club of observers, and as their president had often impressed 

 upon them the duty of observing, he would venture to bring before 

 them some examples of matters which required their observation. 

 They need not go out of their way to do this, but everything they 

 met with ia their regular walks or excursions that was a deflection 

 from a given type, anything abormal or eccentric ought to be at once 

 catalogued ; by so doing local clubs would do much good. There were 

 three or four objects he would specially call their attentiou to as worthy 

 of this observation. First, Architecture ; It had long been laid down 

 that an accurate date could be fixed for Norman, Early English, 

 Decorated, and the Perpendicular styles ; but the conclusion he had at 

 length arrived at was that though these dates were most valuable, yet 

 they must be received with great modification. It was often thought 

 that architects worked by a certain fixed law in Mediaeval times and 

 never departed from this law and standard, but he thought architects 

 then were much like architects now, and they went in for imitations of 

 a past period. Then as now in their church restorations they were as 

 reckless as the destroyers of our own day ; in fact, they had not any 

 hard and fast rule. Though it was difficult to prove the cases in 

 which architects previous to date had anticipated the style peculiar to 

 that date, yet in some instances it could easily be traced, e.g., Norman 

 architects by the intersection of two round arches built pointed arches 

 as much as those of a subsequent period. To come to latter instances ; 

 why in Decorated architecture should there never be a vertical line as 

 some suppose \ Look at Gloucester Cathedral, there Perpendicular 

 work was found at least 100 years before the accepted date of that 

 style. Fan tracery, so distinguishing an English feature, was con- 

 sidered not to have come in till temp. Henry VIT., except in Gloucester 

 Cathedral, where we find it in work of the 14th century (1360). Then 

 again we have architects directly imitating work of an earlier period ; 

 take for instance the so-called Norman work at Bradenstoke Priory, 

 and the Norman work introduced into the Perpendicular wall at 

 Kilmersdon. To come nearer home take the case of Bitton (his own 

 church), originally an Ante-Norman building, where the Bishop 

 Buttons of the 14lh century literally smashed up the old Norman work, 

 the 15th century architects destroyed the old chancel and west front, and 



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