There appears to us to be no order of architecture better calculated for the purpose to which it is generally adopted, than the chaste and pure Norman style, barbarously denominated Gothic. It affords a great variety of light, airy beauty, and tasteful grandeur. In this country, the Norman order succeeded the Saxon, and we lost nothing by the exchange; for even now, that we have the entire benefit of a choice of the purest Grecian (since its revival by Inigo Jones), it is a matter of taste to be certain; but in our estimation, the chaste Norman is to be preferred to the purest Grecian, for the purposes for which it is intended; and if the means answer the ultimate end, we submit this to be the proper criterion for preference. We find it usually employed in religious edifices; it is pure, light, airy, and cheerful: and we are of opinion that the service of gratitude and thanks to the Creator demands a disposition of mind which these feelings are best calculated to inspire. Domestic architecture is various, and chiefly regulated by the various purposes for which it is designed. Its characteristic is utility. CHAIN-BRIDGES. (See Frontispiece.) It appears, from a description of bridges of suspension, communicated by R. Stephenson, civil engineer, some time ago, to the “Philosophical Journal,” that the first chain-bridge constructed in this country is believed to be one over the Tees, forming a communication between the counties of Durham and York. It is supposed, on good authority, to have been erected about 1741, and is described in the “Antiquities of Durham” as “a bridge suspended on iron chains, stretched from rock to rock, over a chasm nearly sixty feet deep, for the passage of travellers, particularly miners. This bridge is seventy feet in length, and little more than two feet broad, with a hand-rail on one side, and planked in such a manner that the traveller experiences all the tremulous motion of the chain, and sees himself suspended over a roaring gulf, on an agitated and restless gangway, to which few strangers dare trust themselves.” In 1816-17, two or three bridges of iron were constructed; the first, by Mr. Lees, an extensive woollen manufacturer, at Galashiels, in Scotland. This experiment, although made with slender wire, and necessarily imperfect in its construction, deserves to be noticed, as affording a practical example of the tenacity of iron so applied.--These wire bridges were suspended not upon the catemarian principle so successfully adopted in the larger works subsequently undertaken, but by means of diagonal braces, radiating from their points of suspension on either side towards the centre of the roadway. The unfortunate fabric next mentioned was constructed on this defective principle. Among the earliest practical exhibitions of this novel architecture in the United Kingdom, may be mentioned the uncommonly elegant and light chain-bridge which was