Next in importance, and probably in date, comes the choir of the Temple Church, which was consecrated in 1240--a more fortunate building than the last, and not needing from me any chronicle of its restoration. It is, in idea, a magnified transcript of the Lady Chapel at St. Saviour’s, being, like it, vaulted throughout upon pillars of equal height, and is probably about the most perfect specimen in England of this beautiful mode of construction. The only other important instance I recollect in London of the earlier portion of our style is the chapel at Lambeth--a very good Early English chapel, though somewhat dishonoured by plaster vaulting, the ribs of which I myself saw being prepared for by a core of spikes and tar-cord. Let us hope that this is the last instance of such construction, especially of its introduction in a time-honoured building like this! We now come to one of the noblest of England’s temples--the Abbey Church of Westminster; and you will readily excuse me from dishonouring this truly glorious temple by attempting its description in the course of a hasty catalogue like that I am now giving. As you all know, it was commenced in 1245 by King Henry III., and the eastern portions finished about 1269. This makes it contemporary, in a certain sense, with Amiens; for though the latter was commenced in 1220, it was not completed till 1288. There can be no doubt that the cathedral at Amiens was, at the time of its erection, viewed as the most perfect development of the style; for it is clear that it was made, in many instances, the model on which the designs of other churches were formed. Cologne Cathedral, for instance, was commenced in 1248, during the erection of that at Amiens, and is manifestly a free copy of it so far as concerns its earlier portions;[45] and though Westminster Abbey is by no means built on the model of Amiens, it was probably influenced by it. That prodigious pile, carried forward through so long a series of years, would be a great object of interest to all contemporary church-builders; and Henry, who was much in France, would naturally send the architect of his own sacred mausoleum to see the great work of his day. Westminster Abbey is a church built on a French ideal, but with English detail--a great French thought expressed in excellent English. The windows are of the perfected bar tracery, which had not yet been much used in England; but in other respects I cannot find a distinctively French detail--or scarcely any--in the building, excepting the work of a single French foliage carver. Even the plan, which is purely French in idea, is carried out in a manner quite different from that of any French church I have seen.