buttresses of the multangular chevet of the French cathedrals tend to increase this feeling, and to give the impression of an unfinished building still surrounded with huge piles of scaffolding. The plain rectangular east end of most of the English cathedrals, and the comparative simplicity of the easily intelligible buttresses and pinnacles, give an air of repose and peacefulness to these edifices which is sought for in vain in most French examples. The portals of France are amongst the chief glories of its churches. The doorways of the English churches, although sometimes beautiful in detail, never attempt to reach the magnitude or splendour of those of France. But the side porches of the English churches are often of great size and beauty. When attention is directed to the details of pointed architecture, constructional characteristics are found to pervade their design. In France, there is visible in every element of early pointed work a continuous effort to indicate its intention and purpose. Constructional utility rules everything, each member is designed to perform its function in the most perfect manner, and ornament is employed to express that idea. By means of the square or angular abacus of the caps and bases of the shafts, which are always set so as to show what member they carry, an effort is made to express the motive of the design, and the caps are carved with spirited foliage, signifying by its upward tendency the vigour with which they perform their duty. (Fig. 20.) The shafts of the piers, also, are so arranged and grouped and set at such heights as to declare at once the function they perform in supporting certain ribs and mouldings of the arches and vaults, and the tracery of the windows gives expression to the ideas which have guided its design. The constructional principles of the French architecture are especially distinct in the naked, but vigorous, churches of the early Cistercians in France. The details of the early English work, while equally beautiful with French work, are not quite so expressive of growth and vigour. The foliage is conventional in the extreme, and less suggestive of vitality and development. The abacus of the caps, which is almost invariably round, does not so fully express their purpose in the design, while the mouldings with which the caps are usually ornamented fail to show the life and spirit of the carved and foliaged caps of France. (Fig. 21.) In the same way the introduction of tracery in the English windows lags behind that of France. In the latter country window tracery was fully developed by 1250, while in England the lancet form, single or grouped, was still adhered to. In variety of clustered columns and in richness of mouldings, however, the English style held its own.