30 PAPERS, ETC. 



on them. Among these, I think, we miist, on the wliole, 

 give the first place to Martock, though my old favourite 

 Wrington, decidedly superior without, forma a very for- 

 midable rival within. 



In my paper of last year I spoke of the distinguishing and 

 characteristic merit of Somersetshire work, as consisting in 

 the combination of the unity and grandeur peculiar to the 

 Perpendicvdar style, with much of the delicacy and purity 

 of detail more commonly distinctive of the earlier styles. 

 I also referred to St. Mary Redcllffe as exhibiting this 

 character in its highest perfection, and as having probably 

 been the model after which the smaller edifices were 

 designed. But we must look for the germs of the local 

 Perpeudicular style at a much earlier period than this. 

 We can trace them up to an early stage of the Lancet 

 style. Somersetshire does indeed contain examples of a 

 noble variety of that style quite alien from our present 

 purpose, but of which I shall hope to treat on some other 

 occasion, and to show its influence on other parts of our 

 Island, by tracing the relation in which Wells and Glaston- 

 bury stand to Llandaff and St. David's.* But Somerset- 

 shire contains at least one noble example of an Early 

 Gothic interior of widely different character, and in which, 

 I think, we may fairly recognize the first parent of the 

 local Continuous. Every one knows the süperb church 

 of St. Cuthbert at Wells, with its magnificent Early 

 English arcades and its Perpendicular clerestory superadded. 

 Now here it requires a technical eye to see that it is super- 

 added ; the Early work has quite the general effect of the 

 ordmary Perpendicular of the county ; the immensely tall 

 shafts are utterly unlike the genex'ality of Early English 

 pillars, and especially unlike those in the neighbouring 



* See llistory and Antiquities of St. David's, p. 64, 



