It had lost a finial from one of its back standards, and a round was gone from the left side.

Such as appreciate the poetry of architecture, see in its multitude of spires and finials (large and small) a thousand vegetable forms, uniting to produce a bewildering effect upon the imagination; but no word-picture can do justice to the almost matchless beauty of this fine blossom of Gothic architecture.

But, "unless a language be invented full of lance-headed characters, and Gothic vagaries of arch and finial, flower and fruit, bird and beast," the beauties and glories of the temples of Italy, and her unparalleled galleries of art, can never be described.

Even the broken finial and the two crockets lying on the ground expose your ignorance.

For it has no touch of that unrest of soul which is expressed by the spire, and still more by the compound spire, with its pinnacles, crockets, finialswhich are finials only in name; for they do not finish, and are really terminal buds, as it were, longing to open and grow upward, even as the crockets are bracts and leaves thrown off as the shoot has grown.

The pinnacles, too, blossomed into crockets and bud-like finials, and began to gather more thickly about the roots of the spire, and from them often leaped flying-buttresses against it.

They concealed the first springing of their spires behind clustering pinnacles, flying-buttresses, canopied niches with gigantic statues, galleries with battlements and parapets pierced and mantled in lacework of flamboyant tracery, pointed gables alive with crockets and finials, and long, quaint dormers,all with a bewildering intricacy of enrichment.

So too does the very interesting contract for its building, which shows how much was left to the craftsman's pride in his work and how little he was trammelled by conditions, save that the work was to be "finished in all points, as well in imagery work, pictures, and finials, according to the due form and proportion of the Cross at Abingdon.

The remainder is divided into a series of 20 feet heights, two twenties from cornice to top of parapet of octagon, 20 in each of the two decorated stages of the spire, 20 to centre of the upper spire-lights, three twenties to the finial.

The square pillar surmounted by sundial and ball which for years supplanted the original finial has in turn been replaced by a new canopy and cross.

Upon the tower is an enriched stone lantern, perforated with gothic windows of two heights, each angle having a buttress and enriched finial; the whole being terminated by an ornamental, pierced, and very rich crown parapet.

The marble's bluish gray is relieved by sparkling crystallizations, and its unwrought blocks are handled with an ornamental effect in the piers, lintels, and arches, and well set off by a simple high-pitched slate roof, with terra-cotta hiprolls, crestings, and finials.

Clarence Budington Kelland (A); 2May62; R294876. What price flame finials.

Clarence Budington Kelland (A); 2May62; R294876. What price flame finials.

A Gothic shrine, exquisitely worked and chiselled, bright with the shimmering of its gold in the light of the wax tapers, and of such delicate and airy work that the slightest motion made it shiver, shaking its finials like ears of corn.

Barrington Court (now a farm) is a magnificent E-shaped building, with numerous twisted chimneys, turrets, and finials.

The windows are traceried, and have above them figures of the four Evangelists, and ecclesiastical effigies stand as finials on two of the gables.

Worle, Hutton, Locking, Loxton, Banwell); (2) arch with quaint finial at entrance to rood-loft stair; (3) old glass in S. chapel.

Hard by is a fine tithe barn with finials on the gables, and a 15th-cent.

Observe also (1) old wooden door, (2) the lion serving as a finial to W. gable.

The farm near the church has an ecclesiastical-looking window and some carved finials.

The barn (14th cent.) has Dec. doorways, rounded buttresses on either side of the main entrance, and remains of finials.

MINARETS, a salient feature of Mohammedan architecture, are tall slim towers, in several storeys with balconies, from which the muezzin calls the people to prayer, and terminated by a spire or finial.

TOPE, the popular name in Buddhist countries for a species of cupola-shaped tumulus surmounted by a finial, in shape like an open parasol, the emblem of Hindu royalty; these parasol finials were often placed one upon the top of the other until a great height was reached; one in Ceylon attains a height of 249 ft., with a diameter of 360 ft.; were used to preserve relics or to commemorate some event.

TOPE, the popular name in Buddhist countries for a species of cupola-shaped tumulus surmounted by a finial, in shape like an open parasol, the emblem of Hindu royalty; these parasol finials were often placed one upon the top of the other until a great height was reached; one in Ceylon attains a height of 249 ft., with a diameter of 360 ft.; were used to preserve relics or to commemorate some event.