While Mr. Barry was thus engaged almost incessantly on Italian buildings, he did not neglect the mediæval style, which was every day becoming better understood and more popular. In this style his works (after 1829) were comparatively few, until he engaged in the competition for the New Palace at Westminster. But the interest and study, which he at this time bestowed on Gothic architecture, must not be measured by the number of works which he actually carried out. He could not but be aware of the increasing power of the “Gothic Revival,” and, though he never wavered in his allegiance to the Italian, though to the last he maintained, against the pure Gothicists, its intrinsic beauty and peculiar appropriateness for certain classes of buildings, yet he viewed the Gothic movement with the greatest sympathy. With his early Gothic designs he had already learnt to be greatly dissatisfied; and, before he ventured on any further attempts in the same style, he not only gave much attention to the writings of the Gothic School, but studied carefully every English example of the style, which could be quoted as an authority. BIRMINGHAM GRAMMAR SCHOOL.--The effect of this thought and study was seen in the design for the Birmingham Grammar School in 1833. Greatly admired at the time of its production, it did not, of course, escape criticism in after days from its author as well as from others. But it certainly indicated an extraordinary advance in knowledge of Gothic, and in power of handling the style, both as to principles and as to details, and proved that its author was at least keeping pace with the architectural taste and knowledge of the time. The site was such as to allow only of a street-front, and this fact had great effect on the design. The building was to contain, not only the Great Schools and Class Rooms, but also two residences, which of course needed the advantage of street frontage. The elevation adopted was regular and symmetrical. Simple as it is, it was the result of considerable study. The central portion was of course devoted to the Great Schools (placed on the first floor,[57] with an entrance cloister and class rooms on the ground floor), and the residences were made to form the wings of the building. Their two-storied oriels ranged with the great windows of the school; the parapet was unbroken, except by raised battlements over the centre of the wings.