At St Alban’s, where the unmanagable nature of the material,--the Roman brick,--rendering finished architecture unattainable, we find these two principles supplying all architectural requirements, and producing results certainly rude, but not unpleasing in their effect. This building is often said to partake of “Saxon” character. I think the very reverse of this; for the one thing to which it trusts for effect is that which scarcely exists in Anglo-Saxon buildings, while it is the leading principle in Norman ones. This error is the natural result of looking to rudeness of workmanship and homeliness of material, instead of the principles of design, as the evidences of early style. The next principle is merely the resultant of those already named. It is the decoration by mouldings of the salient divisions of the arch and the substitution of decorative shafts for those of the pier. These principles do not necessarily accompany one another. An arch-order may be moulded or otherwise decorated, while the corresponding pier-order may remain square, the two being parted by an impost; or the decorations of the arch may, without the intervening impost, be continued through the pier; or, again, a shaft may be substituted for the pier-order, while the arch-order remains plain. The above principles, thus variable in their application, supply the most marked features in the perfected Romanesque style, nor can any arched architecture be perfect without them. To illustrate their effects let us take a doorway of the older English period, and contrast it with a Norman doorway. [Illustration: Fig. 232. Saxon Door Jamb. Fig. 233.--Norman Door Jamb and Arch.]