of this “fan-vaulting” are St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the Chapel of Henry VII, attached to Westminster Abbey in London, and chief and noblest of all, Kings College Chapel at Cambridge. This last may well be thought the finest interior in England; and the other examples mentioned are inferior in charm: and yet, since the Cambridge Chapel has been shown in photography very often, it has seemed better to consider here less-known examples. The vault is a perfectly safe building, especially on a small scale, but it is not rib-vaulting. When, however, the great vault of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey was undertaken, about 1515, a different system had to be followed. The span or clear width of the nave is not very great and yet the task of supporting the astonishing stone roof, seen in [Plate XXXV], was one worthy of the shrewdest and most daring builder of the time. The stone ribs which spring directly from the uprights with but the slightest pretense at vaulting shafts in little round mouldings with slightly marked capitals, are really the arches which carry the whole stone structure of the roof. The great pendants into which these ribs disappear, and which themselves form the basis of the fan-vaulting system, are of course without constructional value. The roof is to be taken as an elaborate piece of geometrical carving, ingeniously arranged in the semblance of a constructional work; its real construction (sound enough, intelligent enough, or the roof would not stand) masked by the extraordinary composition in radiating lines, as if the cloister of Gloucester Cathedral had lent its roof to be raised high into the air, and completed on the side towards the windows by the continuing of each circular cone in that direction. [Plate XXXVI] gives the admirable drawing made by Robert Willis of the construction of this vault and it is easy to see that while the mechanical skill shown in the work is great and peculiar, there is nothing whatever left of the system of Gothic vaulting, nor any dependence placed