nave: there is on the north clerestory wall at Kettering, a figure of an angel looking towards the middle of the wall above the chancel arch; while there are remains on the south wall at Liddington, of a huge whale-like figure representing the mouth of Hades. The subjects represented in these paintings were of the utmost variety. A good idea of the beauty of colour attained by the artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries may be gained from a study of the fragmentary figure and pattern paintings at Cirencester or the important remains at Bloxham. To the end of the middle ages much pattern and diaper work was used in painting large surfaces or filling in backgrounds. In several Northamptonshire churches the soffits of arches are covered with reddish brown scrolls of leafage, at its best most elaborate and delicate. The shafts in the angles of the tower at Fairford are painted with a spiral pattern in two colours, like a barber's pole, and at Fairford and Burford there are important remains of late diapered backgrounds. One of the best pieces of fifteenth century diaper painting known to the present writer is that above the chancel arch at Llanbedr-ystrad-yw in Breconshire, which served as a background to a rood and figures of St Mary and St John. [Illustration: Fig. 15. Patrington, Yorks: interior, looking across nave from south transept.] § 48. Mural painting, however, was little more than a complement to the stained or painted windows, which were the most gorgeous note of colour in the medieval fabric. There is no more familiar feature of medieval architecture than the gradual increase in the size of windows, due to that constant progress in the science of architectural construction, in which the timber-roofed parish church followed the vaulted cathedral. The low round-headed windows of the twelfth century were followed by the long lancets of the early thirteenth century. Lancets gradually drew closer and closer together, and were united with spherical openings above, until the mullioned window with its geometrical tracery was formed. The restless spirit of the medieval craftsman was not satisfied with tracery imprisoned within geometrical limits: the enclosing circles and triangles were removed, and the tracery twined in naturalistic curves in the head of the window. Then, at the middle of the fourteenth century, the limit of the imitation of nature was reached. The Black Death formed a sudden division between the work of the old school and the new age, and that formalism in window tracery began, which lasted for years, and left its mark on our architecture as late as the days of the Stewarts. It was long the fashion among those who saw merely the decline in architectural detail, distinctive of the 'Perpendicular' style, to speak of the magnificent achievements of the fifteenth century masons with an overbearing contempt. As a matter of fact, fifteenth century builders were gifted with a power of