But the English architect saw how crude and harsh and unpleasant to the eye was the bald, sharp-angled arch, and he bevelled it away, substituting delicate mouldings, and the section of the block of masonry at the spring of the arch was now not a parallelogram, but a hexagon. There was accordingly no need for the Ionic horns, and he treated his capital as a basket of flowers or foliage, or as a bowl wreathed round with leaves. This is infinitely more beautiful. But our architects fifty years ago, when taking a holiday, rushed off to Normandy and filled their sketch-books with drawings made in French churches, and on returning home used them up in “restoring” our English sacred buildings, or in designing churches and town halls on foreign lines. [Illustration: VALE CRUCIS ABBEY] And what excuse can be found for plate-tracery that consists in drilling holes in slabs in Caen stone for windows, when exquisite tracery and moulding can be wrought out of the same stone? I should have liked to take Mr. Ferry, the perpetrator of the abominations at Corwen, to Vale Crucis Abbey and shame him by the comparison. The only portions of the earlier church left at Corwen are the lancets at the east end, and a bit of north wall of the chancel. Over the south porch door into the church is an early incised cross, that is popularly supposed to be the impression of Owen Glyndwr’s dagger, flung from the height above, and which left its mark on the stone. Into the east side of the north porch is built the leaning Carreg-y-Big-yn-y-Fach-Rewlyd (the Pointed Stone in the Frosty Corner). It is about six feet high, and is a prehistoric menhir. The story goes that the church was begun on another site, but every night the stones were removed and brought here and heaped about this block. Accordingly the builders accepted the intimation and erected the church where it now stands. An old cross with interlaced Celtic work on it, and a short sword in relief, stands in the churchyard. The Maen Llwyd, near Llandeilo, has also a sword carved on it, and such stones probably indicate the burial-place of a warrior. The base is indented with hollows, like the cup-markings found in menhirs, dolmens, and flat rocks, which are still a mystery to antiquaries, but which were perhaps intended as receptacles for oil as oblations to the _manes_ of the dead, for some councils and bishops denounced the superstitious anointings of standing stones by the semi-Christianised peasantry.