features of the face, the doorway representing the mouth, and the windows the eyes and nose. Illustration: Crowmarsh Church "The reason why the windows were in some instances so small, we may imagine was because they were sometimes not glazed, and it was desirable that, to keep out the wind and rain and the winter's cold, they should be only just large enough to admit the necessary light. I have lately seen an old Norman window which had been long bricked up, in which there had evidently never been any glass[63]. We need not be surprised at this, for even so lately as in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was no uncommon thing for the windows in private houses to have no glass in them. Illustration: Diagram of arches "Now we come to the pointed-headed arches. From about A.D. 1150 to A.D. 1200, which is called the _Transition_ period the two styles were a good deal mixed. People have different, opinions as to the origin of these pointed arches. A learned friend of mine has an idea of his own about it, which he calls _the finger theory_. He supposes that all church arches and tracery may be derived from different positions in which the fingers may be placed when the hands are clasped as in prayer, and that from these, first the round, and then the pointed arch was suggested as a fit design to be adopted for a House of Prayer. It is at least an ingenious and a pleasing conception. Some have imagined that the meeting of branches in a grove of trees first gave the idea of the pointed arch. Often, as I have looked down the avenue by old Wood's cottage, has the opening at the opposite end reminded me of the eastern window of some splendid cathedral, whilst the long intervening rows of trees, with their branches uniting overhead, has suggested to my mind the pillars and groined roof of the building. Our old heathen forefathers knew well the grand effect of these magnificent temples of nature's building, when they selected them as the places best adapted for their awful sacrifices, and the worship of their 'Unknown God[64].' But it seems most probable that one style of architecture naturally introduced another, and that the pointed followed naturally from the semi-circular arch. When the builders saw what a beautiful arch was produced by a number of their old semi-circular arches intersecting each other, they gradually introduced the newly-discovered pointed arch, and at length, finding that it admitted of such a far greater variety of beautiful tracery in the window, they abandoned the old style altogether.