42 PAPERS, ETC. 
This, I am informed, is owing to a difference in the kind 
of stone employed. In the north we find a remarkable 
delicacy of workmanship, while, in the south, with the 
same general character, with nearly equal magnificence 
of general design, and with the same tendency to retain 
early detail, there is often much coarseness and clumsiness 
in the actual execution. This is particularly conspicuous 
in St. Mary Magdalen, Taunton, a church of most imposing 
general effect, but whose details will not bear examination. 
In the south we find ashlar masonry less commonly used 
in other parts than the towers, and a coarse battlement is 
in common use, while in the north we continually find 
straight parapets elegantly pierced, and more commonly 
broken by pinnacles. In the best churches in Bristol we 
find the same general excellence of work as in the neigh- 
bouring part of Somerset, but from the crumbling stone 
employed, the external enrichments have almost entirely 
vanished. 
TOWERS. 
I begin now with the towers. One would have thought 
that it could need no argument to prove that a grand 
Perpendicular tower ranked among the noblest triumphs of 
architectural skill, and that it was among the greatest boasts 
of England in general, and of Somersetshire in particular, 
to have brought so glorious a feature to perfection. Even 
the ecclesiological school, in their intense depreciation of our 
most truly national architecture, do not deny its positive 
beauty, but are content to place it after the form which 
finishes in a spire. This is a mere matter of taste, on 
which we may well be content to differ; it is in fact 
simply a question between the highest degree of grace and 
the highest degree of majesty. But there is another 
view of the subject which cannot be passed by so lightly, 
secuag 
