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from each other, further than we might reasonably 
suppose they would differ in a work of such mag- 
nitude, and which must have been carried on 
through fifteen or twenty consecutive years. The 
details of the west end in such a work, (for they 
always built from east to west,) might be expected 
to be, (as we find them in the work before us,) 
less harsh and more elaborate than those eastward 
of it. 
The date when the early English style was intro- 
duced in England is marked with sufficient exactness. 
It happened that Canterbury Cathedral was then 
building, and almost daily account of the progress 
of the edifice has come down to us from the pen of 
the contemporary monk, Gervase. We find it re- 
corded by him that in the year 1178 the chief mason, 
(who had begun the new works,) William of Sens, 
fell from the scaffold and injured himself so severely 
that, after staying about two years in England, he 
was obliged to resign his master trowel, which 
Prior Conrad gave forthwith to “ William, the 
Englishman.” Now, this William, the Englishman, 
continued the work, “ according to the new fashion” 
which at that time began to prevail—and the work of 
William of Sens is Norman—that of William, the 
Englishman, is pure early English. It is scarcely 
probable that William of Sens, or Conrad his master, 
would have employed the Norman mode, on a work 
like Canterbury cathedral, (which, as William of 
Malmsbury tells us, astonished all beholders,) had 
