Although interesting to English antiquaries, the specimens of Saxon art are so insignificant as hardly to deserve much notice in a universal history of the art, and one or two examples will suffice to explain the peculiarities of the style. The tower of Earl’s Barton in Northamptonshire contains in itself more undoubted Saxon characteristics than any other specimen yet described: its angles, as shown in Woodcut No. 799, are constructed with that peculiar form of quoin known as “long and short,” while its faces are ornamented by long pilaster-like slips connected by semicircular arches or more frequently by straight-lined cross-bracing which might be regarded as wooden in its character were it not for the through bond stones which mark their junction. The windows (Woodcut No. 800) are formed by gouty balusters, looking very much as if they were turned in a lathe, and the whole arrangements bear out that character. Even more characteristic of the style than this, is the doorway under the tower of the church at Monkwearmouth in Durham (Woodcut No. 801). There seems no doubt but that it is part of the church which Benedict Biscop erected there in the 7th century. According to the chronicles, when he was enabled by the liberality of King Ecgfrid to found a monastery there, he went, in 674, to Gaul to procure masons who could erect it in the “Roman manner” that is, in imitation of the basilicas in Rome. The twined serpents with birds’ beaks, on the right doorpost, are, as we know from manuscripts of that age, singularly characteristic of the style, but not, so far as I know, found elsewhere engraved in stone on a church door. Though quaint and interesting to the antiquary, it must be confessed there is not much grace or beauty in any feature of the style, or even an approach to grandeur of dimensions in any example which has been spared to the present day. Had any great conventual church or cathedral survived we might perhaps be forced to modify this opinion:[95] but the only one of which we know anything is that which was erected at Canterbury by Archbishop Odo in the years 940-960, to replace the older church of St. Augustine.[96] Even this, however, we only know from the description of Edmer, the singer, who saw it before it was destroyed by fire in 1067. Like the German churches of that age, it seems to have had two apses. The principal one, towards the east, was appropriated to the clergy; while the western one belonged to the laity, or, as we should now say, was devoted to parochial purposes. Its walls and structure probably resembled the nave of Montier-en-Der (Woodcut No. 610), or the Basse Œuvre at Beauvais (Woodcut No. 608)— plain piers supporting round arches below, and small circular-headed windows in a plain wall above.