"Although, however, Mr. Rickman's simple division of Church Architecture into four Periods, or Styles, may perhaps have been the one best suited to his time, and to the elementary state of the knowledge of the subject possessed by the best informed Archæologists of his day, it may with propriety be questioned how far such a division is suited to the exigencies of writers of the present day, or to the present advanced tastes of knowledge on the subject. "Simplicity was doubtless the object Mr. Rickman had in view in his division of English Architecture into four Styles only. This is a recommendation, however, which can hardly be said to hold good at the present day: it behoves us to consider well, perhaps more especially at the present moment, whether Mr. Rickman's system fulfils all the conditions essential to one calculated for popular and universal use; and whether we should therefore seek to confirm and to perpetuate it, or whether the time has not arrived for the adoption of a more detailed and accurate division of the long and noble series of buildings which contain the History of our National Architecture from the Heptarchy to the Reformation."[A] No one can enter into an inquiry of this kind without eventually coming to the conclusion that there are two large classes of Buildings containing distinctive marks of peculiarity of character, which find no place in Mr. Rickman's system, but which nevertheless, from the number and importance of their examples, are pre-eminently entitled to separate classification. These two classes are those to which the buildings enumerated at pp. 24, and 31, 32 respectively belong, and which cannot, without circumlocution, be described in any of the terms prescribed by Mr. Rickman. As regards the earlier of these two classes, the extent to which these distinctive peculiarities of detail exist, will perhaps at first scarcely be credited, and proofs of a much more extensive and satisfactory character than are contained in the following pages, or could be looked for in an elementary work of this nature, will probably be required before its title to separate classification will be universally conceded.