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Rh Be. VI, Ch. III. TOMBS. 191 that it is difficult to go wrong in selecting examples, though hopeless to expect with any reasonable amount of illustration to explain its beauties. The niches at the back of the altar-screen at Winchester are among the best examples of that combination of constructive lines and decorative details which when properly balanced make up the per- fection of architectural decoration ; or, perhaps, even better than these are the heads of the three niches over the sedilia in the parish church at Heckington in Lincolnshire (Woodcut No. 622). The style of these examples is peculiar to England, and quite equal to anything that can be found on the Continent; and thousands of examjiles, more or less perfect, executed during tlie Edwardian ])eriod, exist in every corner of the country. Bishop Marshall's tomb at Exeter (Woodcut No. 621), though somewhat earlier, displays the same playful combination of conventional foliage Avith architectural details. After the year 1300, however, we can perceive a change gradually creeping over the style of decoration. Constructive forms are be- coming inore and more prominent ; merely decorative features being gradually dropped as years Avent on. In Prior de Estria's screen in Canterbury Cathedral, for instance (Woodcut No. 623), though all the elegance of earlier times is retained, the principal features are mechanical, and the decoration much more subdued than in the examples just quoted. The celebrated doorway leading to the chapter-house at Rochester (Woodcut No. 628) is a still more striking example of this. It is rich even to excess ; but the larger part of its decoration consists of ornaments which could be drawn with instruments. Of free-hand carving there is comparatively little ; and though the whole effect is very satisfactory, there is so evident a ten- dency towards the mere mechanical arrangement of the Perpendicular style that it does not please to the same extent as earlier works of the same class. Tombs. Among the more beautiful objects of decorative art with which our churches were adorned during the Middle Ages are the canopies or shrines erected over the burying-places of kings or prelates, or as cenotaphs in honor of their memory. Simple slabs, with a figure upon them, seem to have been all that Avas attempted during the Norman period ; but the pomp of sepulchral magnificence gradually developed itself, so that by the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century Ave have some of the most splendid specimens existing, and the practice lasted down almost to the Renaissance, as exemplified in Bishop West's tomb at Ely (1515—1584), or Bishop Gardiner's at Winchester (1531-1555). At first the tomb-builders were content with a simple wooden tester, like that Avhich covers the tomb of the Black Prince at Canter-