It will be seen thus how completely this important and characteristic feature of Gothic architecture, the buttress, is the outcome of practical conditions of construction. It is treated decoratively, but it is itself a necessary engineering expedient in the construction. The application of the same principle, and its effect upon architectural expression, may be seen in some other examples besides that of the buttress in its usual shape and position. The whole arrangement and disposition of an arched building is affected by the necessity of providing counterforts to resist the thrust of arches. The position of the central tower, for instance, in so many cathedrals and churches, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, is not only the result of a feeling for architectural effect and the centralizing of the composition, it is the position in which also the tower has the cross walls of nave and transepts abutting against it in all four directions: if the tower is to be placed over the central roof at all, it could only be over this point of the plan. In the Norman buildings, which in some respects were finer constructions than those of later Gothic, the desire to provide a firm abutment for the arches carrying the tower had a most marked effect on the architectural expression of the interior. At Tewkesbury, for instance, while the lower piers are designed in the usual way toward the north and south sides (viz., as portions of a pier of nearly square proportion standing under the angle of the tower), in the east and west direction the tower piers run out into great solid masses of wall, in order to insure a sufficient abutment for the tower arches. On the north and south sides the solid transept walls were available immediately on the other side of the low arch of the side aisle, but on the east and west sides there were only the nave and choir arcades to take the thrust of the north and south tower arches, and so the Normans took care to interpose a massive piece of wall between, in order that the thrust of the tower arches might be neutralized before it could operate against the less solid arcaded portions of the walls. This expedient, this great mass of wall introduced solely for constructive reasons, adds greatly to the grandeur of the interior architectural effect. The true constructive and architectural perception of the Normans in this treatment of the lower piers is illustrated by the curious contrast presented at Salisbury. There the tower piers are rather small, the style is later, and the massive building of the Normans had given way to a more graceful but less monumental manner of building. Still the abutment of the tower arches was probably sufficient for the weight of the tower as at first built; but when the lofty spire was put on the top of this, its vertical weight, pressing upon the tower arches and increasing their horizontal thrust, actually thrust the nave and choir arcades out of the