12 PAPEKS, ETC. 



If my Company are wiser or more fortunate than I was, 

 they will now diverge to South Petherton, a place to which 

 I can only act as a finger-post, and sliall be happy to re- 

 ceive their report of the central octagon when they rejoin 

 me at Martoch. Here however I shall have no great occa- 

 sion to linger; we have only to mark the beautiful eastern 

 quintuplet, and to express a wish that this, as well as the 

 east Windows at Yeovil and Burnham, may all experience a 

 speedy unblocking. We must however also cast a glance 

 on the Decorated house, recently illustrated in Mx. Parker's 

 beautiful volume on Domestic Architecture. At Muchelney 

 we shall find the ruins of the Abbey, which I should very 

 much like to inspect again more at leisure than I was able 

 to do the only time I saw them. But I remember a beau- 

 tiful Perpendicular cloister, and that the domestic buildings 

 seemed to be built up against the west end of the church 

 in an unusual manner. 



Huish Episcopi I must put to a stränge use. I feel half 

 inclined, as I contemplate that glorious tower even in no 

 better representation than my own drawing, to renew my 

 old fight with Mr. Ruskin, to point to those gradually as- 

 cending buttresses — I beg pardon, crutches — those bands 

 of foliation, those magnificent Windows with their delicate 

 screens of open work, and that imperial diadem of battle- 

 ments aud pinnacles, and ask of the reviler of England's 

 noblest glories, whether this too is an "ugly church tower," 

 a specimen of " savage Gothic " or " detestable Perpendi- 

 cular." I am even tempted to break a lance with my 

 respected friend Mr. Warre as to the " principle of spire- 

 growth," only that I am somewhat mollified by finding that 

 he agrees with myself in placing even glorious Huish after 

 still more glorious Wrington. But my present business is 

 not with this magnificent tower, but with the poor little 

 church to which it forms so wondcrful an excrescence. The 



