PERPENDICULAR TOWERS OF SOMERSET. 51 



appear particularly to apply to towers ; and if he be right, 

 it foUows that, so far as any building is deficient in these 

 points, by so much it is defective as a Gotliic design ; and 

 what I sliall endeavour to shew is, that as there was a 

 gradually increasing recognition and development of these 

 great priuciples, from the Eomanesque to the Decorated, 

 so a gradual neglect of them took place from that period 

 to the end of the reign of Henry VIII., and that our later 

 towers, commonly known as Henry VII. towers, are in fact 

 as completely post-Grothic buildings as those German 

 edifices to which the leamed Professor applies that term. 

 The accompanying plates, which are intended to Ulustrate 

 this, represent a Venetian campanUe and five Somerset- 

 shire Perpendicular towers, — West Monkton, Wrington, 

 Wellington, Bishop's Lydeard, and St, Mary's, Taunton. 



Now it wUl, I presume, be readily aUowed that unity of 

 design is essentially necessary to the perfection of a Gothic 

 tower ; — I mean, that if any part of the buUding can be 

 removed without injury to the general plan, it is clearly an 

 excrescence; and though this excrescence may be in itself 

 beautiful, it is a faulty principle for any important part of 

 a buUding to be independent of the othor parts, or, in 

 other words, there shoidd not be a pile of independent 

 buildings one upon another, instead of one building standing 

 on a sufficient base, and rising naturally as it were from it, 

 continuously, and without break ; and it is to produce this 

 unity of design that the priuciples above mentioned are 

 absolutely necessary in the construction of a tower. 



That they are necessary wiU, I think, appear from a 

 slight inspection of the campanile, which, however beautiful 

 it may be as a campanile, is certainly the very reverse of 

 what a Gothic tower ought to be. It has uo defined base, 



