14 PAPERS, ETC. 



I am not qulte certaln whither I ought now to direct 

 your Steps. You must not omit the grand Perpendicular 

 house at Lijtes Carey, wlth its Decorated chapel, retained 

 from an earlier mansion, its noble hall, with its poor 

 Windows and fine open roof, its porcli, its orlels, its State 

 rooms with their rieh ceilings and panelling of later date, 

 and a small feature which attracted my attention in no 

 slight degree, a door-screen enriched with linen pattern and 

 a crest of Tudor flower. Compare the eastern and southern 

 fronts of Lytes Carey ; one a mass of gables and projec- 

 tions, tlie other a perfect flat, broken only by the central 

 oriels ; the chapel attached at one end ; something so 

 whoUy distinct as in no wise to invade its uniformity. 

 Here is a clear lesson that the picturesque effect of a 

 Gothic building is not to be sought by a conscious striving 

 after irregularity, by accumulating a gable here, a turret 

 here, a chimney there, but by making each portion of the 

 building serve its own purpose, and teil its own tale. A 

 hall, a chapel, a porch, — a journey to Glastonbury might 

 perhaps teach us to add, a kitchen, — must stand forth as 

 distinct portions with distinct roofs ; but mere ranges of 

 ordinary rooms need not be gabled and gabled from a mere 

 abstract love of gabling. If we are to pick holes, it might 

 be deemed a fault at Lytes Carey that the hall does not teil 

 its tale tili we get within the quadi'angle, and that in the 

 south front, the magnificent parapet of the oriel seems to 

 make something of the kind feit as lacking along the whole 

 extent of the wall. 



Lytes Carey must, undoubtedly, be seen, and yet 1 want 

 to convey my party, though it is a long way from Yeovil 

 and trenchlng on the Jurisdiction of Glastonbury, to the 

 newly restored church of Buthigh. This was a church of 

 the same plan as Odcombe ; transepts have recently been 



