ON THE PERPENDICULAR OF SOMERSET. 



11 



maintaln the credit of Somerset in this respect also. 

 The form I aUude to is that in whicli the tower is sup- 

 ported by four äqual polygonal tui-rets, one at each corner. 

 This, when the tower rises from the ground, 1 must, 

 maucrre the mallson of Mr. Ruskin, consider very inferior 

 to the ordinary buttressed form ; but for a central tower, 

 borne up by the four arms of a great cross church, iti8 

 surely the grandest that can be devised. Buttresses m 

 this Position never look natural; they almost always, even 

 at Uminster, involve some awkward shift or other; bat 

 the turrets rise from the centre with much less impropriety, 

 seemino- in some sort to be the external Prolongation ot 

 the four great piers on which the tower is supported. 

 No one, I think, can faU to recognise the infinite supe- 

 riority of this arrangement who compares the great tower 

 of Canterbury with that of Gloucester, or the smaller 

 examples at Cricklade and Ashford with the extremely 

 beautitul, but far inferior, erections at Wolverhampton and 

 Melton Mowbray. 



Of this form I can here produce nothing better than the 

 tower of Bath Cathedral. I am far from entirely depreci- 

 ating that church, which certainly possesses great majesty ot 

 effect both within and without ; but there arefew buildinga 

 in which the architect seems so often to have gone wilMly 

 wroncr. The unusual proportion between the aisles and 

 the clerestory was a bold experiment, and how far it 

 may be thought to have succeeded is, to a great extent a 

 matter of taste; but there really was no reason why the 

 tower should not have been made square, or why its Win- 

 dows should have been set in square panels. Stdl, from any 

 point where the peculiar shape is not very conspicuous, 

 there is a good deal of dignity and justness of proportion 

 about this steeple. But the addition of spires to the turrets 



