In the "Vision of Piers Ploughman" an interesting description is given of a Dominican convent of the fourteenth century. We will not trouble the reader with the very archaic original, but will give him a paraphrase of it. The writer says that, on approaching, he was so bewildered by their magnitude and beauty, that for a long time he could distinguish nothing certainly but stately buildings of stone, pillars carved and painted, and great windows well wrought. In the quadrangle he notices the cross standing in the centre, surrounded with tabernacle-work: he enters the minster (church), and describes the arches carved and gilded, the wide windows full of shields of arms and merchants' marks on stained glass, the high tombs under canopies, with armed effigies in alabaster, and lovely ladies lying by their sides in many gay garments. He passes into the cloister and sees it pillared and painted, and covered with lead and paved with tiles, and conduits of white metal pouring their water into latten (bronze) lavatories beautifully wrought. The chapter-house he says was wrought like a great church, carved and painted like a parliament-house. Then he went into the fratry, and found it a hall fit for a knight and his household, with broad boards (tables) and clean benches, and windows wrought as in a church. Then he wandered all about-- "And seigh halles ful heigh, and houses ful noble, Chambres with chymneys, and chapeles gaye, And kychenes for an high kynge in castels to holden, And their dortoure ydight with dores ful stronge, Fermerye, and fraitur, with fele more houses, And all strong stone wall, sterne opon heithe, With gay garites and grete, and ich whole yglazed, And other houses ynowe to herberwe the queene." The churches of the friars differed from those of monks. They were frequently composed either of a nave only or a nave and two (often very narrow) aisles, without transepts, or chapels, or towers; they were adapted especially for preaching to large congregations--_e.g._ the Austin Friars' Church in the City of London, lately restored; St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich. In Viollet le Duc's "Dictionary of Architecture" is given a bird's-eye view of the monastery of the Augustine Friars of St. Marie des Vaux Verts, near Brussels, which is a complete example of one of these houses.[90]