English Gothic. From the point of view of scientific architecture its design is highly esteemed by specialists, and the intrinsic beauty of the ruins and of the majestic vision which they suggest appeals, in our day, to a much wider class.

In the first place, it is evident that this was the largest original Cistercian church in England.1 Rievaulx, we have seen, eventually surpassed it, and so did Fountains, but they were not built at once and from one design, and before the extension of their choirs they were both shorter than Byland. This pre-eminence in size was attained without sacrificing the proportions of the Latin cross-the design so dear to the early Cistercian builders. The great length of the nave was the first conspicuous feature which contributed to this result, the second was still more noteworthy.

"Byland," wrote Mr. Edmund Sharpe, "was the first and only church of the order in which the piers and arches of the ground story were carried round the whole structure." In other words, whereas most Cistercian churches had north and south aisles to the nave, eastern aisles only to the transept, and originally no aisles at all to the presbytery, Byland had, as it were, a continuous aisle, running west as well as

1 Its actual length, as mentioned above (p. 51), was 328 feet.

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east of the transept, and east as well as north and south of the choir. This transverse eastern aisle may very probably have been intended, like the eastern chapel or transept at Fountains, to supply sites for additional altars. At the western end there was, as at Fountains and Rievaulx, a porch or galilee, and the corbels of the "lean-to" roof may still be seen. As late as 1426 one William Tirplady directed by his will that his remains should be buried "in the galilee of St. Mary's Abbey at Byland." From the existing west end, north wall of nave, and portions of north transept and choir, we are to conjure up, then, a singularly perfect transitional and Early English abbey church of rather more elaborate design than the normal Cistercian type. For, besides the peculiarities already mentioned, there is a triforium at Byland, whereas other great churches of the same order, such as Kirkstall and Fountains, have no such feature. The arches of this triforium are pointed, and so, presumably, were those of the clerestory. The Abbey, in fact, is remarkable as the first Cistercian example of the use of the pointed arch for decorative as distinguished from constructive purposes. The lower windows were round, but the three

1 Vide an Appendix in Walbran's Fountains Abbey, vol. ii. (Surtees Society).

great lancets at the west are pointed, and, what is more remarkable, so are two of the three western doorways. Even in the choir, which may be supposed to have been built before the nave, we do not find, as from the analogy of Ripon we might have expected, any lingering preference for the round arch.

Now it has been pointed out by Mr. Micklethwaite that "the period during which the Cistercians were building their abbeys all over Europe was exactly that in which the Gothic style grew from its Romanesque infancy to the full manhood of the thirteenth century. It was the period during which men learned to value and use the pointed arch." And Mr. Sharpe has said that, dating the corruption and decadence of the Cistercian order from the end of the thirteenth century, there was a period of about 200 years during which 1200 Cistercian abbeys were founded, and he does not know one of these the general plan of which is not in accordance with that of all the rest, nor a single church which does not bear in its details the impress of its Cistercian origin. Some of these characteristics may have been, as he suggests, the result of rule, some of habit, but at least it is absolutely indispensable to any fruitful study of English monastic architecture that we should constantly remember the "vast and widespread organisation, with the great St.